Recipe: Bakery-style mandarin muffins with raisins
The first citrus fruit of the season flavors this bright muffin. Debbie Arrington
Like a taste of sunshine, mandarins may be the perfect winter fruit. They’re sweet, juicy and packed with vitamin C (good for fighting winter colds).
It’s mandarin season and these delightful easy-to-peel gems are in good supply. You’ll need only two or three for a batch of these bright yellow muffins.
These muffins are bakery style with big fluffy tops that overextend their cups. The trick is to fill the cups to the top edge – and make sure to grease the top of the muffin tin so the muffin tops don’t stick. Paper or silicone liners are a must.
These muffins will freeze well, too. So any time you want a taste of sunshine, just defrost a muffin.
Mandarin muffins
Makes 12 to 15
Ingredients:
2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature
½ cup shortening
1 to 2 tablespoons mandarin zest
1-3/4 cups sugar
1/3 cup fresh-squeezed mandarin juice (about 2 or 3 mandarins)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¾ cup milk
¼ cup cream
½ cup raisins (optional)
Sugar for topping
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Prepare muffin tin; grease top and line cups with paper or silicon liners. Set aside.
Sift together flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
In a large bowl with an electric mixer, cream together butter, shortening and mandarin zest. Add sugar and blend with mixer on medium speed until creamy. With the mixer running, add mandarin juice in a steady stream. Add vanilla.
Mix together milk and cream. Alternately, add a third of flour mixture and a third of milk mixture to the batter, mixing well after each addition until fully incorporated. Fold in raisins, if using.
Let batter rest for 10 minutes before filling cups.
With two spoons, gently fill muffin cups to the rim. Sprinkle sugar over the top of each muffin.
Bake muffins in preheated 375-degree oven for 25 minutes or until tops are golden and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Let the muffins rest in the muffin tin for 10 minutes after baking. Use a sharp, thin-bladed knife to separate edges (if necessary) before lifting muffins out of the tin.
Then, transfer the muffins to a wire rack to finish cooling.
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Garden Checklist for week of Jan. 12
Once the winds die down, it’s good winter gardening weather with plenty to do:
* Prune, prune, prune. Now is the time to cut back most deciduous trees and shrubs. The exceptions are spring-flowering shrubs such as lilacs.
* Now is the time to prune fruit trees. (The exceptions are apricot and cherry trees, which are susceptible to a fungus that causes dieback. Save them until summer.) Clean up leaves and debris around the trees to prevent the spread of disease.
* Prune roses, even if they’re still trying to bloom. Strip off any remaining leaves, so the bush will be able to put out new growth in early spring.
* Clean up leaves and debris around your newly pruned roses and shrubs. Put down fresh mulch or bark to keep roots cozy.
* After the wind stops, apply horticultural oil to fruit trees to control scale, mites and aphids. Oils need 24 hours of dry weather after application to be effective.
* This is also the time to spray a copper-based fungicide to peach and nectarine trees to fight leaf curl. (The safest effective fungicides available for backyard trees are copper soap -- aka copper octanoate -- or copper ammonium, a fixed copper fungicide. Apply either of these copper products with 1% horticultural oil to increase effectiveness.)
* When forced bulbs sprout, move them to a cool, bright window. Give them a quarter turn each day so the stems will grow straight.
* Browse through seed catalogs and start making plans for spring and summer.
* Divide daylilies, Shasta daisies and other perennials.
* Cut back and divide chrysanthemums.
* Plant bare-root roses, trees and shrubs.
* Transplant pansies, violas, calendulas, English daisies, snapdragons and fairy primroses.
* In the vegetable garden, plant fava beans, head lettuce, mustard, onion sets, radicchio and radishes.
* Plant bare-root asparagus and root divisions of rhubarb.
* In the bulb department, plant callas, anemones, ranunculus and gladioli for bloom from late spring into summer.
* Plant blooming azaleas, camellias and rhododendrons. If you’re shopping for these beautiful landscape plants, you can now find them in full flower at local nurseries.
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