Make-ahead Muffins with variations

Ok, YUM. One of my (many) goals this year is to do more from-scratch cooking because with our business getting busier, I admit we have eaten more than our share of $5 Hot and Ready pizzas. We are staying super-busy, so I bought a bunch of make-ahead freezer meals cookbooks, and I've been trying some of them out. This recipe for "Anytime Muffins" comes from "The Best Make-Ahead Recipe" cookbook from the folks at America's Test Kitchen. I LOVE their books. Seriously, they aren't lying when they say "The Best Recipe". But anyway, back to the muffins. You make the batter, load up your muffin tins, then freeze. When they're frozen solid, you pop them out of your muffin tin like ice cubes, put them in a freezer bag and then bake as needed. I made bunches a few days ago and they've been in my freezer. I just pulled a handful out and baked them. YUM. So good. This is a keeper. I tried the blueberry (using frozen blueberries) and the lemon poppyseed. I will try all of them eventually. If you really want to assembly-line it, it helps to have two or three muffin tins (provided you have room in your freezer for them) so you can double the batch. Here you go:

Anytime Muffins
makes 12 HUGE muffins or 16 more-regular-but-still-kind-of-large muffins.

3 cups all-purpose unbleached flour
1 T. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt (use a little less if using salted butter)
10 T butter (1 1/4 sticks)
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cups plain yogurt (the book says to use whole milk yogurt, but I used low-fat, and they were scrum-diddly-uptious.)

Coat a 12-cup muffin tin with Pam or line with cupcake papers (I used papers). Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside. In another bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each.

Beat half of the flour mixture into the butter/sugar/egg misture until combined. Add 1/3 of the yogurt (1/2 cup), and mix well. Beat in half of the remaining flour mixture, then another 1/3 of the yogurt. Finish by beating in the last of the flour, and then the rest of the yogurt. Mix just until well-combined.

Fill muffin cups with the batter. Wrap tightly with greased plastic wrap and refrigerate up to 24 hours, or freeze for up to a month. After they are completely frozen (about 6 hours), pop the batter balls out of the muffin tins and store in a ziploc freezer bag until needed. (Put them back into a muffin tin when ready to bake-- which is probably pretty obvious, but you never know!)

Bake at 375 degrees for:
25-30 minutes if baking right away, 30-35 minutes if refrigerated, 35-40 minutes if frozen. Note: My times were a bit shorter than this because I made smaller muffins than the recipe calls for. I divided my batter into 16 muffins, and their baking times were about 5 minutes less than this recipe calls for. Seriously-- if you make this recipe into 12 muffins, they'll be huge.

Variations:

Blueberry: Add 2 tsp. vanilla when beating in the eggs. Fold 2 cups fresh blueberries, tossed with a little flour, into batter. To use frozen berries, scoop two cups of berries into a collander and run cool water over them until the water runs clear. Dry them off by rolling around on a paper towel, and then add to batter. (I used less than 2 cups, and I thought there were plenty of blueberries)

Apricot-Almond: Stir 1 cup finely diced dried apricots and 1/2 tsp. almond extract into the finished batter.

Cranberry-Orange: Stir in 1 1/2 cups chopped fresh (or thawed frozen) cranberries and 1 tsp. grated orange zest into the finshed batter.

Lemon Poppyseed: Stir 2 1/2 T. of poppy seeds and 1 1/2 T. grated lemon zest into the dry ingredients before mixing the batter. Mix as usual. (I didn't have any fresh lemons, so I used lemon extract instead of the lemon zest. It was good!)

Banana-Pecan: Substitute 1 cup packed brown sugar for the granulated sugar, and add 1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg to the flour mixture. Stir 1 1/2 cups finely diced bananas and 3/4 cup coarsly chopped toasted pecans into the finished batter.