A Week of Muffins: Chocolate-Pomegranate Muffins

This week, my blog's going to be a little bit different. My family and I are traveling to Orlando, Florida to visit Universal Studios, and then Disney World, and we'll be gone 9 days. Initially, I was considering just skipping the idea of doing blog posts at all for the duration of my vacation. After all, what's the point of being on vacation if you're still cranking out 3 or 4 blog posts while you're away? But then I had this brainstorm, and it worked out really well.

In the May 2011 issue of Cooking Light, I found a section on muffins. I love muffins, and I make them quite frequently. Imagine my delight when I was given 5 new muffin recipes in the latest issue of my mag! I couldn't decide which ones I wanted to try; they all sounded so good, and so different from one another. Finally, I took this as a sign that the stars were to align with both these muffins and with my vacation. I decided to bake all 5 of the muffins, and then I could make my vacation week Muffin Week! I just wrote all the blog posts ahead of time, and now I'll be able to publish each one gradually as the week unfolds. And you, as the reader, gets the 5 new muffin recipes, too!

First up: these Chocolate-Pomegranate Muffins. I decided to alter the Cooking Light recipe in a few different ways. It's a fantastic base recipe to play with; feel free to be creative in your version, too. The original recipe called for warm water for most of the liquid in the batter, and then a big handful of mini chocolate chips. Half the chips went into the batter, and the rest were sprinkled on top.

For my variation, I substituted coffee for the half of the water in the batter. I wanted a nice, kicky punch to my muffins. Honestly, I think I could have subbed coffee for all the water, since I did not actually taste coffee in the finished product. I do like to think that it gave the muffins a more intense chocolate flavor, though. As for the mini chips, they still adorned the tops of my muffins. But for inside the batter, I decided to throw in some chocolate covered pomegranate seeds I recently found at Trader Joe's. I loved them in there; they added a bit of fruit, as well as a nice little tangy bite every so often. I'd highly recommend trying to get your hands on some of these, but if you can't find them any dried fruit would be nice in there. Chocolate and fruit for breakfast? What's not to love?

Chocolate-Pomegranate Muffins
adapted from Cooking Light
makes 12 muffins

Ingredients
7.9 oz. all-purpose flour (about 1 3/4 cups)
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup warm brewed coffee
1/2 cup warm water (you can use 1 cup coffee and omit the water, too)
1/4 cup canola oil
1 Tbsp. red wine vinegar
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1/4 cup chocolate covered pomegranate seeds (or just use dried pomegranate seeds)
1/4 cup semisweet mini chocolate chips
Nonstick cooking spray

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Weigh or lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flour and the next 5 ingredients (through salt) in a large bowl, stirring with a whisk.

2. Make a well in the center of the mixture. Combine the coffee, water, and the next 4 ingredients (through egg) in a bowl, stirring well with a whisk. Stir in the chocolate covered pomegranate seeds. Add the oil mixture to the flour mixture, stirring just until moist.

3. Place 12 muffin-cup liners in muffin cups, and coat liners with cooking spray (I coated my muffin tins with cooking spray, omitted the papers, and I was fine). Divide batter evenly among the muffin cups. Sprinkle the 1/4 cup mini chips evenly over the batter.

4. Bake for 15 minutes, or until a wooden pick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean. Cool for 5-10 minutes in the pan on a wire rack before turning them out onto the rack to cool completely.

Homemade Barbecue Sauce

Usually, when I am blogging about a meal or a baked good, it's something I've made last week, or at least a few days prior. I like to keep my meals in order, and so I have a queue of sorts. The pictures are uploaded onto the computer, and they wait patiently until I get around to them.

So when I say that I made this barbecue sauce yesterday, and that I couldn't wait any longer to blog about it, that's truly saying something special about this sauce!



I've been a huge fan of barbecue sauce for pretty much my whole life. It is, hands down, my favorite condiment. I can't get enough of it. I'll put it on pretty much anything you can think of. I was dared, as a teenager, to try it on the likes of pancakes, Reese's peanut butter cups, even cinnamon rolls! Ok, let me tell you, none of those were brilliant ideas; they were all pretty gross. But I still tried them, because I was just that devoted to my love of barbecue sauce.

However, I had never made it from scratch....until yesterday. I'd always wanted to, for sure. I knew that I would enjoy playing around with components and spicing it the way I wanted to, and I finally found a reason to whip up a batch; leftover habanero peppers. That's right; we had some extra peppers we'd bought, and suddenly my brain was overtaken with visions of a habanero-flavored barbecue sauce that would knock your socks off. I took to my trusty Recipezaar to see what I could find.



Finally, I found the perfect recipe. It did not have habanero listed in its title; the pepper is almost like a stealth ingredient, listed all the way at the end of the recipe. But, boy, does it make its presence known! I tasted this sauce first before I added the pepper, and then again after I had incorporated it, and the difference was astounding. Of course, that's to be expected when you're dealing with such a hot pepper, but still! It just adds so much to the overall flavor and heat level of the sauce.

Of course, I did tinker with the original recipe a bit, because that's just what I do. I decided to use up some more of my pomegranate molasses in this, since it did call for some molasses. I had to add more sweetness after that, since the pomegranate is very tart and regular molasses is not. So I threw in some honey to increase the sweet. I found out that I was out of chili sauce, so I improvised and used some more of my new best friend, Frank's RedHot Sweet Chili Sauce, along with a bit of extra ketchup. The recipe called for chili powder; instead of regular, I used some ancho chili powder. Oh, and I cut the recipe down to 1/3 the full amount, since that would have yielded about 3 pints of sauce. A bit too much for my little family!

The end result of my playing and experimenting was a dark, thick, sweet sauce that had a sharp tang and a swift kick from the habanero. I have to admit, I just couldn't stop taste-testing this stuff while it was simmering on the stove! It filled the house with an incredibly smoky aroma; it just smelled like summer to me. (It also smelled like dinner to me, so it was very hard to wait around until we could eat!)

I served this alongside a relatively simple turkey burger that was seasoned to taste like Caribbean jerk, a barley and veggie salad, and sweet potato oven fries. The barbecue sauce was fantastic for dipping the burgers in, and I thought it paired especially well with the sweet potato fries. A winner, if I do say so myself!

I said it before, but I'll say it again. If you do try this sauce, be warned: it is spicy! However, it would be just as delicious if you were to omit the habanero, or substitute a slightly less spicy pepper (a jalapeno would be great in this, as well). There's plenty of other flavors in there to make up for the heat.

The original barbecue sauce recipe can be found right here. The recipe I used for the turkey burgers can be found here. It originally came from Rachael Ray, and then somebody posted it to Recipezaar. The sweet potato fries I used were just Ore-Ida frozen fries, and they were good! Finally, the barley and veggie salad recipe is half Cooking Light, half my own creation. I won't post a step-by-step description of what I did, but here is a link to the Cooking Light recipe. I used barley in place of the orzo, kept the dressing the same, and omitted the chicken and goat cheese. It was delicious!

Homemade Barbecue Sauce

adapted from Recipezaar

makes about 2-3 cups

Ingredients

1/2 cup onion, chopped

1/2 cup red bell pepper, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

1 Tbsp. olive oil

1 tsp. ground dry mustard

1 tsp. ancho chili powder

1/2 cup apple cider vinegar

3/4 cup ketchup

1/2 cup sweet chili sauce

1 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce

1 Tbsp. liquid smoke

1/4 cup pomegranate molasses

2 Tbsp. blackstrap molasses

1/3 cup honey

1/4 cup dark brown sugar

1 habanero pepper, minced (remove seeds before using, and don't forget to use protective gloves while handling your pepper!)

Directions

1. Heat the olive oil in a medium saucepan. Add the onions, bell peppers, and garlic and saute until onions are translucent, about 5 minutes. Add dry mustard and chili powder, and stir to incorporate.

2. Lower the heat to a simmer, and add all the remaining ingredients. Stir well, then simmer on low, covered, for at least an hour, stirring occasionally.

3. Let cool, then use either a regular blender or an immersion blender to puree the sauce. Sauce can be stored in an airtight container for about 2 weeks in the fridge, or stored in mason jars in the fridge for longer.

Pomegranate Gingersnaps

Back when I first started baking, about 3 1/2 years ago, I had a lot to learn. I didn't fully realize then that you can't just go around substituting any old ingredient for another. I used to try all kinds of things at first, because I was dieting and wanted to make certain recipes lower in fat and calories. I would try making cookies with no butter, only to find that they turned out gross and weird, with a horrible texture. I attempted brownies made with carob instead of cocoa, and could barely choke down one serving before making my poor husband eat them. Ugh. I could go on and on with more stories like these, but I'll spare you for now. Just take my word for it; I quickly learned to fear ad-libbing in my baking.

Now that I've become a bit more knowledgeable, I decided I was ready to try my hand at improvising again. Only this time, I was determined to make it work, not fail miserably like all those other recipes had.

After looking through The Craft of Baking a bit, I decided that what I really wanted to make were the gingersnaps in the book. I've had this book out from the library for a while now, and this was to be the third time I would bake from it. Since I had made one pretty huge failure first (a pile of yummy crumbs which should have been coffee cake muffins), followed by a rousing success (see my Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookie post!), I figured I would go for best out of three to determine whether this book is one I would want to eventually purchase.

So once I had settled on gingersnaps, I knew instantly how I wanted to switch it up a little bit. I have this open bottle of pomegranate molasses just sitting in my refrigerator, waiting for me to figure out how to use it up. I only buy this molasses for one thing (a scrumptious roasted red pepper dip, which I should really get around to blogging about one of these days!), and that recipe doesn't require me to use much. So normally I end up having to throw out the rest of the bottle after a while, because it'll go bad before I can use it again. Not this time, though. This time I was putting that baby to some good use!

I baked these cookies almost exactly as the recipe indicated. The only two changes I made were to substitute pomegranate molasses for the regular blackstrap kind originally called for, and turbinado sugar in place of the Demerara sugar on the tops of the cookies. After I mixed up the dough, I noticed that it was very soft. Too soft to roll into balls by hand, as the recipe instructed. No problem; I just decided to chill the dough well in the fridge before working with it again. After several hours of chilling, the dough was still pretty soft. I ended up dropping the cookie dough by scoopfuls onto my baking sheets, and then sprinkling sugar on the tops, rather than rolling the dough balls in sugar. I think it was fine this way.

I thought the dough smelled a little funny, and was initially worried. Then I reassured myself by remembering that all molasses smells a little funny. I wasn't deterred! I baked up a small batch of these, and then performed a little taste test with my brave boy, Evan (Xander barely touched his).

These cookies are great! The taste is so unique. They definitely have a disctinctive gingersnap flavor to them; Andy tried one without knowing beforehand what kind of cookie it was, and he could identify instantly that it was a gingersnap. However, they have this interesting, fruity tartness to them, offset nicely by the raw sugar on top. The pomegranate paired well with the ginger. Overall, I was really proud of these cookies; Andy even took them to work and people actually ate them! It felt so good, especially knowing that this was purely experimental and I had no idea how it would all turn out. So this was my first time riffing on an existing recipe in about 3 years, and I was successful!

Pomegranate Gingersnaps

adapted from The Craft of Baking, by Karen DeMasco

makes about 24-30 cookies

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp. kosher salt

1 cup granulated sugar

12 Tbsp. unsalted butter, cut into pieces, at room temperature

2 large eggs

1/4 cup pomegranate molasses (The original recipe used blackstrap molasses. Pomegranate molasses can be difficult to find; I normally can get it at an international grocer, and it can also be ordered online. Another option is to make your own: reduce pomegranate juice on the stovetop by 2/3, until thick and syrupy. Cool before using.)

1 Tbsp. finely grated fresh ginger

1/2 cup turbinado sugar (The original recipe used Demerara sugar. The two sugars are very similar; both are coarse, brown-colored sugars, but Demerara is a bit coarser and molasses-y in flavor.)

Directions

1. In a bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Set aside.

2. In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream together the granulated sugar and the butter until light and fluffy, about 2 to 3 minutes. Beat in the eggs, molasses, and ginger to combine. With the mixer on low speed, gradually add the flour mixture, beating until just incorporated. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator, at least 2 hours. (I chilled half of mine for several days, and it was still great.)

3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Shape the dough into 3/4-inch balls (I used my small cookie scoop) and place 2 inches apart on baking sheet. Sprinkle the tops generously with turbinado sugar. Bake, rotating baking sheets once halfway through, for about 12-14 minutes, until dark golden brown. Transfer sheet to wire racks to cool completely. Cookies can be stored in airtight containers at room temperature for 5 days.