Muffin Wednesday: Fruit Cake

After the holidays last year, I bought some clearance fruit-cake fruit. I had no idea what I'd do with it, but it was really cheap. I had to buy it.

I searched around the interweb yesterday and found a fruit cake muffin recipe on Serious Eats that was simple and looked good. Let's try it out!

1/2 t salt
2 c flour
2 sticks butter, at room temperature (I used margarine because we had some in the CE2 fridge)
1 c sugar
4 eggs
1 1/2 t vanilla
1 c chopped glace cherries, plus more for garnish
1 c chopped candied pineapple
1 c chopped candied orange peel
1/2 c chopped dates
1/2 c raisins

(Instead, I used 1 pound of "fruit cake fruit")

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line two muffin pans.

2. In a small bowl, whisk together the salt and flour. In a large bowl, beat together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Beat in vanilla extract. Beat in flour mixture in two additions.

3. Add candied fruits to dough and mix until evenly distributed. Spoon batter into muffin cups.
   
   
4. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until tops are golden. Garnish with a glace cherry, if desired.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

These were quick and easy to whip up. The batter was sweet and yummy... and the muffins were denser like a fruit cake. And they were very pretty with all the colors inside!

I hesitated to tell the kids they were "fruit cake"muffins because of the negative connotation. So I called them "fruity" muffins until they decided they were good... then I spilled the beans.

Everyone enjoyed them, and it was fun to have the first fruit cake of the season :)