One-Handed Muffins (a.k.a Orange Craisin Muffins)

Last Friday Adam and I had a playdate at my friend Brigitte's house.  Her toddler wasn't at daycare that day so it was a full house.  We were outnumbered 3-2 but somehow it worked out just fine.  It helped that Adam was able to nap (despite being alone in an unfamiliar room in the basement) so was asleep or cheerful for most of the afternoon.

It was going so well in fact that we decided to try out a new muffin recipe that Brigitte had found.  Orange raisin muffins.  Well actually, she didn't have raisins handy so we decided to use Craisins instead.  The odd thing about the recipe is that everything should go into the blender at once.  That had us pretty skeptical...but we thought it would be a fun experiment even if it didn't work out!

1 orange , cut in 8 slices (peel too!)

1/2 cup orange juice

1/4 cup oil

1 egg 

2/3 cup sugar (reduced to 1/2 cup)

1 1/2 cup flour 

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

2 snack packs of Craisins

I think those are all the ingredients. Just trying to remember now off the top of my head so I might have forgotten something but it looks right.

Of course, when we dumped the dry ingredients over the wet ones in the blender we both had an "I'm not so sure..." expression on our faces.  Was the blender really going to be able to fold everything together?

The answer to that question was No.  Way too thick. Only a small section near the blades swirled around a bit but everything else just remained stacked in layers.  A bust.

Brigitte with her 7-month old Delia

So we moved onto Plan B which was me holding the handle of the blender while Brigitte stabbed away at the mixture with a wooden spoon.  Both of us were holding our babies with our other hands at the time, hence, One-Handed Muffins.

Pretty goopy stuff

Then we added Craisins and continued mixing. It wasn't looking any better.

Craisins!

Brigitte put the mixture into the muffin tins.  Still no better looking.

Should it be this wet?

Clearly they didn't rise. I'm guessing it had something to do with the baking powder not being mixed properly throughout the goop.  The muffins were super moist after the instructed 15-min so we kept them in the oven for another 10 or so. Still really moist.  Oh well, it was somewhat of a success.  They looked pretty cute and tasted...well...like orange muffins with Craisins in them!  I'd try this recipe again but in proper mixing bowls - if I do I'll report back and tell you all how it went :)

Babies practicing tummy-time