On the menu: Blood Orange Blueberry Olive Oil Muffins
This, friends, was once a collapsed cake. It is now reincarnated and fully redeemed. We went snowshoeing on the coast on Saturday. We got up that morning to make preparations for the trip, and I decided to make muffins. These muffins. I remembered the taste and texture of the blood orange olive oil cake, and I knew that such bright, bold flavor would make an excellent accompaniment to a day in the wild white winter we’ve been experiencing as of late. Also, we were almost at the end of one of our 10 lb. boxes of blueberries from the farm–it was time to make some freezer space.
My mental image may have been a bit fantastical: there was maybe 3 inches of snow on the ground, which of course was icy, so our snowshoes made a lot of noise and for the most part, just seemed silly. But there were still sunshiny muffins. The golden flecks of zest in the verdant crumb and the pockets of complementary-colored fruit made for an aesthetically-pleasing treat; the sweet berries, tart orange, and bitter olive oil pleased the palate as well.
I’ve been back in the kitchen a lot more these days than I was in the fall. Since Kevin, while preparing to defend his Master’s thesis, took the culinary helm as I established myself as a doctoral student, I owe him. I really, really owe him. He’s gotten crazy busy lately trying to wrap up loose ends of his Master’s program and get started on his PhD work. My workload has shifted a bit; it’s not any lighter, and I actually feel more pressure make serious progress on my research, but I can’t ignore how important is for me to spend time away from the computer and in the kitchen. Being in the kitchen, no matter how much work I need to do, is almost always relieving. It’s also rewarding, especially when an idea pops into my head and I execute it in under an hour.
I knew that I was going to remake this cake someday. Cross that off my ever-growing to-do list.
Blood Orange Blueberry Olive Oil Muffins
adapted from Smitten Kitchen, who adapted it from Melissa Clark
makes 16 muffins
3 blood oranges
1 cup sugar
scant 1/2 cup milk
3 large eggs
2/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup frozen wild blueberries
Preheat oven to 350ºF. Line 2 muffin pans with paper liners and set aside. Grate zest from 2 of the oranges and place in a bowl with the sugar. Using your fingers, rub the zest into the sugar until it is evenly distributed.
Supreme an orange: Cut off bottom and top so fruit is exposed and orange can stand upright on a cutting board. Cut away peel and pith, following curve of fruit with your knife. Cut orange segments out of their connective membranes and let them fall into a bowl. Repeat with another orange. Break up segments with your fingers to about 1/4-inch pieces. Halve remaining orange and squeeze juice into a measuring cup; you should have about a 1/4 cup of juice. Add enough milk to the juice until you have 2/3 cup liquid altogether. Pour mixture into bowl with sugar and whisk well. Whisk in eggs and olive oil.
In another bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Gently stir dry ingredients into wet ones. Fold in pieces of orange segments and blueberries. Pour batter into prepared muffin tins. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until muffins are golden and a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then turn out of pan and cool completely before serving. Store airtight at room temperature for 3-4 days.
oh! so, so pretty! and my goodness, so entirely festive for this time of year, right? It makes me envy your frozen blueberries even more than I already do. I love olive oil cakes, by the way…i know some people don’t love their texture, but I find them delightful. go muffins this week!
Oh, I so wish I could send you some blueberries to play with! Olive oil cakes are awesome. I love their dense, moist crumb. And how they get a little bit green?? It makes me swoon.
Hip hip for Team Muffin! Now I have to go play with raspberries…
Verdant crumb, I love it:)
These look tasty! The blood oranges at the grocery store last weekend were as small as the smallest tangerines. And they weren’t at all reddish either… I was suspicious.
Must make muffins – - after all, I’m always on Team Muffin!
Thanks, lady! I was wondering if you would have Internet access in the recesses of the Maine Woods! I hope everything is going well and that you are staying warm
Eeek, the blood oranges are only good for a few weeks, it seems. I don’t want them to go!
Mmmmm, I love the idea of an olive oil cake with citrus and berries. This seem like the perfect treat for this time of year — not too sugary, hearty enough to qualify as a winter snack, but with some much needed brightness from citrus and leftover summer berries. So yum.
My parents have a couple pairs of snowshoes out on the porch, and I’ve been eying them trying to imagine myself as someone who enjoys winter activities. (If there’s any winter activity I would do, it’s snowshoeing, as I fear myself far too uncoordinated to survive skiing or snowboarding.) (:
I made a couple of solid attempts at snowboarding in college…neither of which ended well. I really like cross country skiing, but there is no way in hell I’m going down a hill in skis. Death would be imminent. My mom had grand plans to go snowshoeing last weekend, but alas, there was no snow for the shoeing. I never in a million years would have thought my mom would want to go snowshoeing! It’s so cold this week that I can’t even think about being outside. The low tonight is -25! That’s insanity.
Ah, the ever-growing-to-do list…this is a lovely one to cross off! I love using olive oil in baking now, and the combination of blueberries and citrus is quite tempting. I’m happy you’re getting more time in the kitchen. And I have snow-shoeing on my list to try – hopefully it’ll happen this winter.
I can’t wait to go out again, but now the snow has turned rock hard, which is no fun to walk on! It feels silly to wish for fresh powder for snowshoeing, but I am definitely wishing!
I’ve never gone snow-shoeing before, but it sounds like a lot of fun. It must have been beautiful doing it along a snowy coastline! And I agree about the whole zen of the kitchen thing. It’s nice to just be able to cook and zone out and just think about food, and nothing else. The mind needs a break from the hectic thoughts of the day now and then
Those muffins sound amazing, btw. I love love love blood orange season. It’s so fun to look forward to, that bright ray of magenta sunshine in the dead of winter. And I feel like they taste sweeter than normal oranges, too. Maybe it’s just my brain playing a trick on me since they’re so pretty, but I swear they do have a more “candied” taste to them!
The coast was gorgeous. It’s strange to me to see all the seabirds out in the winter though…wouldn’t you think they’d want to go somewhere warm?
I ate a Cara Cara orange this afternoon, after eating nothing but blood oranges the last few weeks, and I was a bit disappointed. Blood oranges have that bracing pucker that can’t be matched! They have a bit of a berry flavor once the sourness goes away, too. Gah, I just love them SO much!