Greetings iblog empire! My name is Jill and I will be commandeering the site from Matt for a post.  You should all know that I am a blogging virgin. I have never blogged a thing in all my days.  However, after giving Matt the runaround for the last few weeks I am finally blogging what I bake.  I’m kinda a baking fanatic and I spend many hours covered in flour, sugar and various forms of sticky dough.  (As a result, I also spend LOTS of hours in the gym) Matt has been on the receiving end of many of my baking experiments, and I’m pretty confident that he would say they have largely been a success. Well, with the exception of a lemon meringue incident, but we won’t discuss that now.

ANYWAY, onto to what I am blogging about today; Pumpkin Cognac Muffins. I figured it’s a good seasonal choice and who doesn’t like a little liquor with (or in) their dessert?  I should mention that Matt hates anything with pumpkin and was not happy when these came into the office. But he was a brave soul and did take and swallow one bite. Kudos Matt.  This came from a dear friend of mine (thanks Vanessa!) who passed along the recipe with the instruction to play with it. And so I did.  I didn’t change too much from the original recipe, but I think the revisions turned out tasty.

Before I get into the photos and instructions I have one word of advice for this recipe (you could also consider it a warning or a threat) Do not UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES use a stand mixer or hand-held beaters. If you do, I will find you.

DRY INGREDIENTS:

3 1/3 cups of unbleached all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 cups white granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

WET INGREDIENTS:

1 Cup vegetable oil
4 Eggs (room temperature is best)
2/3 cups cognac (I used Hennessey)
2 cups canned PURE pumpkin (do not use the canned pumpkin with the spices already mixed in)

ADD: 1 bag of dried cranberries

DRIZZLE: 3 tablespoons confectioners sugar and 1 tablespoon of cognac

Heat oven to 350 degrees and cook for 30 minutes. Makes approx. 30 muffins

Everything you will need

Here is a quick shot of everything you will need for the muffins. If you don’t have a wooden spoon, use a spatula or any other kind of spoon. Just avoid anything electric.

Dry

First, sift all of the dry ingredients together into a large bowl.

Wet

Next, add the wet ingredients into the dry.

Yum

Yay Hennessy!

Everything Mixed

Carefully, with a wooden spoon, mix all of the wet ingredients into the dry until just combined. If you over mix you will have HORRIBLE muffins. So be slow and gentle. Once the wet is mixed in fold in the dried cranberries. Now you are ready to pour them into the muffin trays! Feel free to drink as much of the Hennessy as you would like during this process.

Batter

Fill each cup about 3/4 of the way full. Overfilling will make a mess.  So don’t overfill unless you are one of those people who love  to spend Saturdays scraping burnt bits off the bottom of the oven.

Fresh out of the oven

Once out of the oven, let them cool in the tray for about 10 minutes. After that, pop them out of the tray and let them completely cool on the counter.

Iced

Once the muffins have completely cooled, mix the confectioners sugar and cognac together in a small bowl until it reaches drizzling consistency and have at it.  Sorry, this is crappy picture. Once this is done they are ready to eat.

Well, I hope you all enjoyed my post and will now frantically run to your kitchens and make these kick a** muffins. If you are like Matt and hate all things pumpkin, I’ll be back with something chocolate next time.