I had wanted to make blueberry muffins for quite awhile. About a month ago, my grocery store advertised what seemed to be an excellent sale on fresh blueberries, blackberries and strawberries. I was thrilled about the prospect of making luscious blueberry muffins, but disappointed when I laid eyes upon the tiniest carton of fresh berries I had ever seen! Since the quantity didn’t seem worth the price, I walked away. After finishing up at the grocery store, I hit the Target next door to complete my grocery shopping. While wandering the frozen food section, I saw that frozen berries were on sale. On a whim, I picked up a bag of blueberries… and promptly forgot about it.

I finally used the frozen berries when my mother joined me for tea on a recent afternoon. I wanted a something freshly-baked to serve with our Lady Grey tea, so I scoured my Google Reader for a fun recipe. I initially saw these muffins on Dinner & Dessert, but found the actual recipe text here. This recipe comes from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours. I’m looking forward to checking out other recipes from this cookbook.

I made the recipes during my lunch break (on of the benefits of working from home!) and was pleased at how quickly they came together. Since the butter had to cool after being heated, I melted it before I started working on juicing and zesting the orange. The juice and zest add a lovely citrus punch. It’s a fun change from your typical blueberry muffin. The muffins themselves are soft, buttery and moist.

Apparently, my husband really liked these muffins! First thing Saturday morning, Mike I had a conversation that went like this:

Mike: So, what’s for breakfast today?

Beth: Toast…eggs…something like that. The usual.

Mike: We’re not having those orange blueberry muffins? I thought you said you were making them.

Beth: <puzzled look>

Mike: Oh, I must have dreamed that.

Here’s the muffin that’s good enough to dream about:

Orange Blueberry Muffins

Yields 12 muffins

Grated zest and juice of 1 orange
About 3/4 cup buttermilk*
2 large eggs
3 tablespoons honey
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1/3 cup sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup blueberries – fresh, preferably, or frozen (not thawed)

Decorating sugar, for topping (optional)

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Butter or spray the 12 molds in a regular-size muffin pan or fit the molds with paper muffin cups. Alternatively, use a silicone muffin pan, which needs neither greasing nor paper cups. Place the muffin pan on a baking sheet.

Pour the orange juice into a large glass measuring cup or a bowl and pour in enough buttermilk to make 1 cup. Whisk in the eggs, honey and melted butter.

In a large bowl, rub the sugar and orange zest together with your fingertips until the sugar is moist and the fragrance of orange strong. Whisk in the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and, with the whisk or a rubber spatula, gently but quickly stir to blend. Don?t worry about being thorough – the batter will be lumpy and bubbly, and that?s just the way it should be. Stir in the blueberries. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups.

Bake for 22 to 25 minutes. If you want to top the muffins with decorating sugar, sprinkle on the sugar after the muffins have baked for 10 minutes. When fully baked, the tops of the muffins will be golden and springy to the touch and a thin knife inserted into the center of the muffins will come out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for 5 minutes before carefully removing each muffin from its mold.

*I did 1 tbsp vinegar then fill up to the 1 cup line with milk. Then I used this mixture for the required buttermilk.

So may flavors, so little time.

I had heard that David Lebovitz’s book The Perfect Scoop was a good ice cream resource, so I checked it out of the library. I now have a list of nearly two dozen homemade ice creams, sorbets and sherbets that I want to try. I was pleased to find that Lebovitz goes into great detail explaining how to make the perfect ice cream custard and offering suggestions for ingredients and mix-ins. I’m definitely adding this book to my kitchen wish-list.

After perusing the grocery store circulars and seeing that strawberries, oranges and Oreos were on sale, I narrowed my potential recipes down to the following: Strawberry Frozen Yogurt, Strawberry Sorbet, Orange Popsicle and Cookies & Cream. With the start of spring, something fruity and light sounded really good. My husband was particularly intrigued by Orange Popsicle, so I set out to buy a bag of oranges (on sale!). Check back in the future, as I plan to try the other recipes over the next few months.

Zesting the oranges gave me the opportunity to use one of my new favorite kitchen tools: my rasp-style Microplane Grater. I used to zest citrus with a box grater, but that was rather difficult and messy. I always ended up with irregular size chunks of zest, and so much of it would stick to the grater. Lebovitz actually addresses these two tools stating that rasp-style graters (like the Microplane) will extract almost twice as much zest as a box grater! Good to know. Squeezing the oranges was interesting, as the only citrus squeezer I have is sized for a lemon. After three oranges, I gave up and augmented with some orange juice from a carton of Tropicana. I think a manual juicer like this may be in my future.

Since this recipe does not use egg yolks, it doesn’t need to be heated. Once I finished the arduous task of squeezing oranges without the proper tools, the rest of the prep work was completed by my blender.

I only modified the recipe slightly. As mentioned above I used some carton orange juice. I also ignored Lebovitz’s warning and used fat free half and half. Finally, I added an additional tablespoon of sugar and an extra teaspoon of triple sec to the ice cream base. Once the base was mixed, it had a yellow-y cream color. For aesthetic purposes, I added a few drops of food coloring and colored the base a light orange.

After refrigerating the base, running it through my ice cream maker and freezing for several hours, the ice cream was as delicious and refreshing as it looked! It has a smooth, creamy orange-y flavor – a more decadent, grown-up version of the classic creamsicle. This homemade ice cream has the consistency of a sherbet, and the addition of triple sec makes it easy to scoop right out of the freezer. It tastes fantastic on it’s own, or sprinkled with miniature chocolate chips. I’m also looking forward to serving it as a summer dessert, garnished with fresh fruit.

Orange Creamsicle Ice Cream

Yields about 1 Quart

2/3 cup sugar
Grated zest of 3 oranges
1 1/4 cups freshly squeezed orange juice (from 4 or 5 large oranges)
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup half and half
2 tsp orange liqueur

1. Pulverize sugar and orange zest in blender.
2. Add orange juice, sour cream, half and half and liqueur. Blend until the sugar is completely dissolved.
3. Chill the mixture in the refrigerator for several house and then process in ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions.