Oat Pecan Fruit Muffins

(Grandmother Anita and Mother)

My mother’s mother, Grandmother Anita, clipped recipes as often as she cut coupons and sale ads.  She was always writing on paper–notes of ideas that she had thought of doing; some of them dreams.  Those dreams became plans, whether or not she got to live them through or simply just kept them on a writing tablet or loose notebook paper.  Some of the recipes are cut from pages of vintage magazines or yellowed newspaper.  They’re now as old as the hills.  Making those recipes were some of the dreams that she had.

In her own cursive writing, beside a recipe that she baked that she really loved, there’s a date jotted down when she first made a dessert or cooked a really good casserole.  The other recipes that she never got to make, she has the words written, “Make this”.  So many years after she’s been gone, we’re finding her words beside recipes as if she’s telling us to give it a whirl, to bake up a storm of what she never got around doing with some of those recipes--because there are so many…  Maybe she purposely wrote them for her daughter, to still be in her daily life in the way of conversing with her…  It’s as though she’s taking part in our lives, even now, because her voice can still be heard through an ink-written command or idea that she wrote on paper so long ago.  You never forget the sound of a loved one’s voice.

As time goes by, there are some recipes, some things, that you keep the same–that you wouldn’t dare change or want to re-do.  And there are some recipes that call for a change, a do-over.  It’s the way recipes are born.  If not thought of out of thin air, recipes are transformed three-fourths or a 360-degree turn. It’s no longer the same recipe.  It’s even given a new name.  It becomes personal and non-forgettable, like the person.

This new recipe, Oat Pecan Fruit Muffins, makes 18 standard-size muffins.  When Grandmother made her oatmeal muffins, she used ‘quick oats’, dry ingredients and shortening or oil with 3 eggs, making a total of 36 muffins for a large crowd of people.  She either had store-bought whole milk to use or fresh cow’s milk from their farm or evaporated milk–depending on what time in her life she made her oatmeal muffins.

(Grandpa George–step-father to my mother, Mother–firstborn, Grandmother Anita, Uncle Paul–middle child, Uncle Latta–youngest)

Although ‘quick oats’ are creamier in oatmeal for breakfast, steel-cut oats are healthier and have a nutty texture and flavor.  Pinhead oats is another term for steel-cut oats when large steel blades are used in the process of cutting and chopping groats (hulled and crushed oats) into several pieces per stalk that makes a chewier and coarser texture of grain.  It cooks into a coarse oatmeal, so a recipe might require a little more liquid and more time on the stove if preparing oatmeal for breakfast.  It is the same for baking with steel-cut, or Pinhead oats–a little more liquid in these muffins, and some “set-time” for them to soften before mixing with other ingredients.

Pour 1 1/2 cups milk into a large bowl of 1 1/2 cups steel-cut oats and a heaping 1/2 cup chopped pecans.

Freshly squeeze and add one-half of an orange.

Add the pulp.

Choose to add any fruit that you desire…  These are red currants that my daughter and I picked last summer and froze.  

They are beautiful red (fuchsia) jewels.

Stir the oats in the milk every so often to moisten.

In a separate bowl, sift all-purpose flour to measure 1 1/2 cups sifted flour.  Back into the large bowl of oats, milk and fruit, sift together 1 1/2 cups sifted flour, 1/2 to 3/4 cup sugar, 4 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, 3/4 teaspoons salt, and 3/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon–directly into the oat mixture.

Beat 2 large eggs in a small bowl.

Stir the beaten eggs and  1/3 cup vegetable oil into the batter.  Add 1 teaspoon almond extract.  Almond extract accentuates citrus fruit more precisely than vanilla.

If need be, stir in a little more flour to prevent a runny or too-thin of a batter.

Spoon into cupcake liners.

Sprinkle oats on top of the muffins and bake in a 425 degree oven for approximately 15 minutes.

Immediately remove from the muffin pan.  Butter the tops and dip into granulated sugar.  Squeeze/squirt fresh orange juice over the sugared muffins.  Serve hot with salted butter or honey butter.

Song & Artist:  New Kid in Town by the Eagles