An Apple Harvest & Apple Oat Muffins

Apple picking is something that I look forward to each year for both the tradition and the beautiful scenery of the Hudson Valley.  The landscape is a welcome reprieve from the city with its gentle rolling hills and billowy white clouds.  As the season is beginning to settle in, I look forward to reintroducing certain ingredients that make fall, well fall.  I begin warming up my baking routine with spices like cinnamon, ginger and freshly grated nutmeg, nothing is quite like a home that is fragranced with this aroma. After picking an extremely large bag of apples, I decided to make Apple Oat Muffins to welcome a recent weekend.  These muffins are lighter than traditional muffins because they do not require any butter, just buttermilk to give them a lot of moisture, while the oatmeal gives them a wonderful texture.  Continue for more... 

Weekend Breakfast::Caramelized Banana Muffins with Browned Butter Glaze

I love bananas, they are healthy snack and always provide just the right amount of energy before my runs, but I can never seem to eat them quick enough to prevent them from ripening too quickly.  Fortunately when you have a few ripened banana's laying around on a Saturday morning the only thing to do is to turn them into some sort of banana treat. I stumbled across this recipe in the October issue of Cooking Light dedicated to quick and easy breads that are on the lighter side - meaning they are not loaded with a lot of oil and butter.  I decided to make Caramelized Banana Bread with Browned Butter Glaze and let me tell you, they were out of this world.