Apple and Pecan Cookie-Muffins

I haven't baked a quickbread in a while, and I wanted to practice my "dicing" and play with my new vegetable peeler. So, I chose this apple and pecan muffin recipe. It's a pretty standard quickbead recipe--flour, buttermilk, egg, sugar, etc.

About dicing: Dicing is a knife skill that requires practice! The first apple quarter took me a really long time to dice, but by the time I got to the last one, I had a system down. (Dicing is cutting something into small cubes).

Like everything in life, baking takes practice! If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. I know that it can be disheartening when you put money, time, and effort into a project, and it turns out awful! But, things are pretty much always better the second time around. It's a learning process.

I'm gonna actually call these muffins "cookie-muffins." The brown sugar carmelized and hardened around the edge of the muffin top, and they are suuuuper sweet. This is a recipe that I am going to play around with (maybe add less sugar, more apples, and some spice--maybe cinnamon). I'll update the recipe after I play around with it. Enjoy!

Recipe- Apple and Pecan Cookie-Muffins

Yield: about 18 muffins

2 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1 and 1/2 cups peeled, cored and diced apple

1/2 cup chopped pecans

1 tsp. salt

1 large egg

1 cup buttermilk or sour milk

1 and 1/2 cups packed light-brown sugar

1/4 cup canola oil

1 tsp. vanilla extract.

1. Position rack in the center of the oven. Preheat to 375. Line a 12-muffin tin with baking cups.

2. Combine the flour, baking soda, apples, pecans, and salt in a large bowl. In a medium bowl, beat the egg until foamy. Beat in the buttermilk, brown sugar, oil, an vanilla extract. Combine the two mixtures, blending until the dry ingredients are just moistened.

3. Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin cups, filling each about 3/4 full. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the muffin comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a wire rack 5-7 minutes. Serve warm, or take muffins out of the pan to cool completely.