Muffins!

The past week has been slightly hectic. I spent a lot of time on the phone interviewing for jobs, and very little time feeding myself. Le Boyfriend actually took over a large share of food-related duties, ordering in a couple nights and feeding me delicious breakfasts when he was here, which resulted in me scavenging leftovers for most of my remaining meals. We won't talk about the fact that I ate nothing but carrots for two meals and bread for another. There may have also been a couple of means comprised entirely of coffee. These things are inconsequential, I think. Or maybe I just don't want to be scolded by said wonderful boyfriend. Either way.

Tomorrow I start working at a rather large social networking site that shall remain unnamed. We will refer to it as Hello, Internet. HI is a nice acronym for a site that lets you find and contact people you used to know, yes? I believe so. Anyway, for the first time in a while, I will be at the mercy of whatever is closest to my office in terms of sustenance. Because I am cheap, I am adamant that I will bring breakfast every morning, but I was having a very hard time getting excited about sitting over a bowl of oatmeal a the office.

After Nick left yesterday, I started thumbing through my copy of 1001 Muffins, in hopes that inspiration would strike. Given that I had a couple of containers of frozen blueberries, I wanted something that used those, but nothing really hit the sweet spot in terms of those recipes. I should also mention that I had about 3 tablespoons of sugar to my name and was not trying to trek up to the store at 9pm, so something with a bit less of the sweet stuff was preferable. I did have orange juice that would stand in as a sweetener and flavor agent, so I searched for recipes using that. After I'd made it through a good chunk of the section with muffin recipes, I stumbled across their Citrus Muffins recipe. It called for only a small amount of sugar and used orange and lime zest for flavoring. It looked promising, but I really dislike zested citrus rinds unless we're talking lemon. I sat and ran the numbers in my head and decided I'd modify it to make something I would actually eat. 

At the end of the process, I had some delicious orange-blueberry muffins that will be perfect to take with me this week for breakfast. They're not terribly sweet, but they're super moist (UGLIEST WORD EVER, fyi) and delicious and my adjustments to the original recipe worked out beautifully. I was worried that the proportions I doctored would give me a dozen-odd weird little blueberry-studded bricks, but I lucked out. I added a bit more flour and baking powder to compensate for the blueberries adding weight and liquid to the batter, then increased the liquid ingredients by 1/4 cup to make sure the batter wouldn't be a nasty, gummy paste.

Please excuse the wretched photo. My kitchen has minimal matural light at 8pm :)

Orange-blueberry muffins - yields 16

1 5/8 c flour

1 1/4 T baking powder

2 T granulated sugar 

1/4 t salt

1 large egg

1/2 c milk

1/2 c orange juice concentrate

1/3 c melted unsalted butter

1 cup fresh blueberries 

Preheat oven to 400. Sift together the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder. In a second bowl, whisk the orange juice, milk, egg and butter together, then combine with the dry ingredients. Fold blueberries in and spoon into muffin cups/papers to 2/3 full (I use an ice cream scoop because I am terribly clumsy). Bake approximately 14 minutes or until muffins are golden on top and spring back from touch.

As a bonus, I got to use the awesome silicone cupcake/muffin wrappers that Nick got me for Christmas last year. I'd never used them before, but I am absolutely smitten with them. I think I will make him some delicious cupcakes with them that he can keep all for himself.

Speaking of that boyfriend of mine, I am in the middle of making him the most delightfully ridiculous, corny, AWESOMELY NERDY gift ever. In just a few weeks, we will celebrate anniversary number two together. I feel that such a gift is warranted for any man willing to deal with my preposterous behavior for more than a short duration, nevermind two continuous years of such torture. He does seem to like it, which has maybe made me question his own sanity and taste once or twice for a brief, fleeting second but he thinks that all these quirks of mine are charming and I find him to be the most lovely person I have ever known, so I will give him that ridiculous gift and look forward to year number three, and all beyond that. 

Now I must go to bed. Tomorrow is day one at Hello, Internet and I am more than slightly nervous (read: TERRIFIED), but it will be nice to be around other people during the daytime hours, since the dog and cat are terrible conversationalists. Wish me luck. Goodnight <3