Long Winter Spice Muffins decorated for Christmas.

The grey outside continues. You can now smell the unfallen snow. The farm has grown into it's winter quiet. The bleakness has only strengthened outside. Inside, the kitchen is a wreck. No idea what will be for dinner tonight.

My mom is visiting taking a couple of days to relax after her christmas stress fest, which we decline to participate in because stress is just unpleasant so why put ourselves through it? It is nice to see mum though. Even if she does just curl up with a book. Dr. Farmer Moomin, plays games on his computer, and I follow the news or create food in the kitchen. later I must make some face moisturizer I am out. Later, we will run the wood stoves. We are getting a very slow start to the day. I am having my morning Macha tea... Avery, ate something bad and the little man is sick to his stomach hiding behind the christmas tree, while Pikku, is still suffering from her cone, on medications to keep her calm and pain free after her reproductive and stomach tying surgeries. Yoda, had issues getting out of bed this morning. He was the last one up, poor old man. The goats and chickens eat outside, and the goats are sliding around on their icy hill. They seem to be giggling about the slipping and sliding...

Omicron, the new variant of this stinky pandemic rages, which is just fine by us because we are no longer leaving the farm until this new variant is past. It is really wonderful to have a safe space like this to just hide from the current misery of the world. However it comes with it's challenges too. It is hard to stay here when people are dying, including people you know and care about. But, because of my asthma this is how we are getting through this. There are no good options right now. There are however safe options. So we pick those and keep going...

One of those safe choices was to create a new kind of muffins. Long Winter Spice Muffins were born on Christmas morning in our little farm kitchen. They are the product of my imagination and invention. I have to say, they were amazing, better even than I ever hoped for. I will eat another one in a few minutes. When they were just out of the oven we ate them with bacon. Sooooo good! We decorated the top with colored sugar and special Christmas sprinkles, which made them a perfect treat for Christmas day brunch. Dr. Farmer Moomin, enjoys these warm spicy muffins at least as much as I do. it isn't safe to be out adventuring in the world right now... Creating new recipes, and adventures in the kitchen is one method I have taken to try to prevent boredom by inventing regular new adventures that don't take us off the farm.

Christmas Long Winter Spice Muffins.

½ cup butter
1 cup maple sugar
½ cup olive oil
1 egg or egg sub equivalent.
2 tea spoons vanilla extract
½ cup of honey
2 ½ cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt (skip if there is salt in the butter)
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¾ teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon cardamom
¾ cups almond milk.
Extra sugar for sprinkling
Optional half a cup of sliced almonds to be mixed into the dough
Optional half a cup of golden raisins to be mixed into the dough.

In a large bowl mix the wet ingredients and the sugar. Mix the dry ingredients into the wets. Prepare your muffin tins and preheat the oven to 380. Once wets and dries are mixed together, spoon it into your prepped muffin tin filling each cup most of the way but not quite full. Garnish the top of each muffin with sugar, pop in the oven, bake for 15-30 minutes checking regularly to do the stick test. Remove from oven when done. Allow to cool and eat.

Enjoy this recipe created right here at Wildflower.
Thank you for reading
Happy Holidays.
Amanda of Wildflower Farm