Raspberry Almond Muffins

I woke up this morning to the sound of the rain, not a terrible thing I suppose if you can stay dry and cozy inside. There is was another thing though that kept my mood gloomy. Brad was leaving for a work trip to Sri Lanka and we have a long history of being away from each other through the years due to travelling. The longest one was 9 months during our engagement. He spent it in Nepal and I lived in the Philippines. To this days it was a wonderful and the most dreadful year of my life.

In order to snap out my misery I decided I needed to keep busy while the kids were at school. I thought it would be a pleasant surprise for them to walk into the house that smelled of warm and fragrant muffins- amazingly fluffy muffins filled with raspberries, the last remnant of the summer!

Ingredients: { Makes 12}

• Flour- 2 cups
• Sugar- 3/4 cup
• Baking powder-1 1/2 tsp.
• Baking soda- 1/2 tsp.
• Salt-1/2 tsp.
• Sour Cream- 1 cup ( I used reduced fat)
• Milk- 1/2 cup
• Vegetable oil- 1/4 cup
• Almond extract (or use vanilla if you don’t like almond)- 1/2 tsp.
• Eggs- 2 large
• Raspberries (fresh or frozen)- 1 cup
• Sliced Almonds- 1-2 tbsp.

Method:

Preheat oven to 400F/200C. Line your muffin pan with paper liners.

In large bowl combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a smaller bowl whisk sour cream, milk, oil, almond extract and eggs.

Pour the wet mixture into the dry mixture and combine until blended, then gently fold in raspberries.

Divide the batter among 12 muffin cups and sprinkle sliced almonds on top. Bake for 20 minutes, test with a toothpick for doneness, it should come out clean. {I also dusted them with a tinge of powdered sugar once they cooled a bit}. Yum!

These muffins are truly gorgeous. My son said that “raspberries make them very refreshing”. 🙂 I just love how children express themselves!

Being busy definitely helped so it’s fair to expect a lot more baking in the next two weeks.

The recipe was adapted from  “The New Good Housekeeping Cookbook”.