king arthur flour spiced peach muffins

One of the best things about our CSA with Wayward Seed is the fruit share.  Every week, we end up with pounds of the stuff.  Even splitting the bounty with P&S, we still have plenty of opportunity to get creative with our fruit.

Peaches are in full swing not only with our CSA, but at the market in general.  Branstool Orchards pulls a semi-truck into the market at this time of year and the lines snake up and around the street so people can do nothing but buy quarter, half and full pecks of peaches.  We may not be Georgia, but I promise an Ohio peach is a fantastic thing.

I was looking for a peach dessert that was not a dessert but still was more than just eating a plain peach.  Enter the muffin – the bread world’s wonderful answer to letting you eat cake for breakfast.  Or lunch.  Or dinner.

Here’s what The King Arthur Flour Baking Companion calls for to make the muffins (the recipe is also available on their site):

• 19 oz unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 4 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 16 oz dark brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp ground allspice
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 large eggs
• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/4 cups milk
• 3 cups diced peaches, skin on

Originally the recipe suggested that three large peaches would get me what I needed, but my peaches were early season at the time and I needed a bit of a fourth (snacking during baking is a bonus).

With the peaches diced, the rest is classic quick bread.  Dry ingredients mixed in one bowl, liquid in another.  Dry ingredients are mixed into wet and then fruit is folded in at the end:

The batter tasted fantastic and very cake-like.  The instructions call for greasing muffin cups, but I’m about making life simple.  Simple means that I use cupcake liners.  Since I liked the taste of the batter, I also skipped the final step of sprinkling the tops of the muffin with additional sugar before baking them in a 400° oven for 25 minutes:

After letting the muffins cool for a few minutes, these were ready for a taste test.  The spice comes primarily from the allspice (nutmeg and cinnamon are there, but clearly are happy to be in the background) and is pleasant, but rather tame.  Don’t get me wrong, these were delicious, but the spice is advertised for those that also consider mild salsa to be “really hot.”  When I make these again, I may consider throwing in some chopped crystallized ginger or some of nutmeg’s crazy rough brother, mace.  Or just make these again, because who doesn’t love a muffin that has super inviting chunks of peach when you crack it open?  Simple is good.