Dark Days Challenge: The breakfast edition

This morning, my entire house was filled with the fantastic smell of breakfast baking. This week's local meal was apple muffins for breakfast.

I knew I wanted to make our breakfast out of the apples, which had come home with us from our Thanksgiving trip to the Omak area. The apples, Romas and Winesaps, caught my attention at the fruit stand because they were a lovely red. When I saw they were from an orchard just down the way, I knew they had to come home with me. The Roma and Winesap are both described as good cooking apples.

I went hunting around for recipes, until I found this simple recipe for apple muffins.

The apples, clearly, were local. The flour came from a mill in Fairhaven. The butter was from Bow. The eggs were humanely raised in Arlington. Unfortunately, my hens are all molting and we aren't getting any eggs right now.

The sugar, unfortunately, was not local. (Can you even get local sugar in Northwest Washington?) I think the next time I make these, and I will make them again, I'm going to experiment with honey to see if I can get a more local muffin. I also think they honey would pair well with the apples.

Also, I used muffin liners, which the recipe did not call for. Turns out the liners were a mistake. The muffins have a strudel topping, and the butter in the topping drips down the sides of the muffin. This meant I just ended up with greasy muffin liners and a dirty muffin tin, which was what I was trying to avoid

I also used a little extra apple and shredded half of it, rather than chopping it all, to spread the apple around a little better.

We enjoyed the muffins with some local milk and it made a lovely meal for a cool Sunday morning.

I have a few more of the apples leftover, and they will soon get baked into something else delicious, I hope. My housemates and husband should be happy. Eating local is pretty tasty. And the hens always like it when I bake with apples, because they love eating the cores.