you had me at salted caramel

coming home from an early barre class last week, i was inspired to whip something up for breakfast.  i'd been perusing my pinterest boards again, which always helps to motivate me to do stuff.  and i'd been drooling over the idea of these salted caramel muffins, so there you go.  the ingredients were simple and already in my kitchen, just waiting to be put together.

the muffins themselves were a snap to mix up, and it always helps to have a stash of powdered buttermilk in the fridge for last-minute cravings such as this.  i usually like to line muffin pans with the paper liners for easy cleanup, but i decided to just spray the shit out of them with some pam for these.  a few minutes after i took them out of the oven, i flipped the pans over and the muffins popped right out.

while they were cooling off, i gathered the ingredients for the caramel sauce.  butter, sugar, cream, vanilla, fleur de sel.  check.

it bubbled up nicely before turning a gorgeous caramelly brown.

doesn't this look tasty?

mmmmm.  i think i'll go have one right now.  that caramel sauce is so good, i just want to eat it with a spoon.  maybe i will.

is your muffin buttered?

...or would you like me to assign someone to butter your muffin for you?

heh.

so the hub mentioned last week that it would be nice to have some muffins or scones in the house for a quick breakfast in the mornings.  and you know me - i'm always down for something like that.  so i started looking at recipes and settled on a mocha chip flavor to make first.

the texture of these was different - good, but not really muffin-y.  it wasn't crumbly, more chewy than anything.  i liked it, as did the teen, and the hub seemed to as well.  the recipe made so many i ended up putting half of them in the freezer to save for another time.

and then the hub brought in a few oranges from the tree in our back yard.  so i came to the natural conclusion - and found this recipe for orange vanilla poppy seed muffins.

the whole recipe only had half a cup of sugar in it, so i decided to give it a little something extra and sprinkled some white sanding sugar on top.  they came out really well, and the poppy seeds and sanding sugar gave it a fun little crunch.  the hub really dug these, so i'm thinking i'll be making them again sometime.

i'd love to bust out some yummy scones, too.  he wasn't a fan of those fantastic maple bacon ones i made a few weeks ago, boo.  and now i'm on the hunt for more delicious muffin recipes.  got any to share?

oh, and hey!  happy birthday to my dear MIL today!