A good muffin recipe is a good buttermilk muffin recipe!

I have a basic muffin recipe I got from... I have no clue where I got. It's been too long ago.  It's the kind of recipe where once you have the batter made you can add whatever you want to it. I like to add one of the following:

• cranberries
• cranberries and white chocolate chips
• almonds
• blueberries
• chocolate chips
• mint chocolate chips
• butterscotch chips

These are easy to make, too. 

• 1/2 cup buttermilk (or plain milk)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 teaspoon baking POWDER
• 2 cups flour
• your choice of goodies

Get the batter into the muffin tins, bake at 425F for 7 minutes, then turn the heat back to 350F and bake for another 13 - 15 minutes. You know your oven. DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN DOOR until the time is up. Cool, eat, or freeze. 

I like to make two batches and freeze them, and they freeze perfectly. A muffin is a good breakfast or late night snack (sometimes). 

There you have it. It's time to get the second batch out of the oven. Enjoy!

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor/The Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, rural living, baking, muffins, country lifestyle, convenience food, recipes, a writer's life, chocolate chips

Fruitcake

It seems that here at Holly Tree Manor, we're all about food these days. When we're not watching our carbs, we're talking about all the good holiday food in our future. Covid 19 be damned, we're having turkey! And stuffing! And pumpkin pie! And bourbon sweet potato pie! And fruitcake!

Yes, I said fruitcake. We like fruitcake, and the more bourbon it has in it, the better we like. 

We grew up in a different time. Our maternal grandmothers had a profound influence on us. Their grandmothers made fruitcakes when finding the candied fruits meant making your own. Those influences are still part of us. We like to carry on the old traditions even if we don't have anyone to pass them down to now. It's just the way it is. 

Until this year, I'd never made a fruitcake from scratch. It was simpler to purchase one and take it home and soak it in real bourbon. But last year we were disappointed with the offering we found, even after giving it a good, long whiskey bath. So this year I located the candied fruits, which provided a recipe, and I got to work. The end result is good but still doesn't take like my grandmother's fruitcake. 

I blame the store-bought candied fruit. For my next attempt, I'm going to get dried fruits, chop them, and let them soak in the booze for several days. Then I'm going to make the fruitcake in the Instant Pot. That should make it really moist. We'll see. 

And maybe we'll actually do something exciting that is not food-related before the end of the week. But I doubt it. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor