Brunch

Brunch seems to be the thing to do in D.C. The perfect opportunity to eat breakfast at a more reasonable time. I'd recently discovered a couple of recipes but they aren't the kind of thing you make for yourself. I mean, do I really want 24 muffins or 8 scones just lying around? No, I don't. Because I would eat them. All of them. And that's probably not so great. So making them for other people is the PERFECT solution.

What did I make, you ask? Well, thanks to pinterest I discovered two recipes that looked beyond amazing. Honeyed Grapefruit Oat Scones and Earl Grey Poppy Seed Muffins.

The Earl Grey Poppy Seed Muffins were super easy and perfectly delicious. 

First, I heated up some milk, it was almost boiling, but not quite. You don't want it to curdle.  

For the tea, I used double bergamot earl grey. It has a stronger flavor, so I think it made the earl grey more pronounced. And since I like tea, that's a good thing. It's supposed to be better if you can use fancy loose leaf stuff, but this is what I had. 

So I just steeped the tea bags while the milk cooled.  

Then I mixed all my dry ingredients together. 

The result is now a large supply of poppy seeds on hand. So I have a feeling these muffins might be making another appearance rather soon. 

I cut up all the butter and put it in my cute little dish to heat it up. 

Got the eggs all ready. I love owning little clear dishes to put my ingredients in. It makes me feel like I'm on a cooking show. 

You can see the milk really changed color. I think I left the tea bags in about 10 minutes. Shorter would mean less of a earl grey flavor, but as we've discovered, I love tea. So 10 minutes it is. 

There is something disgusting about melted butter. And yet, it makes things taste SO GOOD. 

Then I poured the milk into the dry ingredients. Well, I also poured the butter and eggs in too. and mixed it all together. 

The result: DELICIOUS BATTER. Seriously, so good. I could have eaten just the batter. But I tried not to, raw eggs and all. 

I bought cute little blue cupcake wrappers. It matched the poppy seeds soo....

It only made 12 muffins. There was some batter left, so I think I could have made a couple mini ones too. I also used self rising flour, so I think If i had let it sit a little longer, I could have turned it into 18 cupcakes that were a little more airy. 

Then I put them in the oven. 

For 25 minutes. 

And waited. 

Then I took them out and let them cool for a bit on a wire rack. These babies really rose. I think I could have put less batter in each one. Next time that's probably what I'll do. I didn't realize how much they would rise. 

But seriously, how cute are they?

Then I melted down a little bit of orange marmalade and glazed the top. 

It added the perfect amount of sweetness. 

I couldn't help myself. 

So good!

Then I made the scones. I personally don't like warm fruit, so if I were making an entire batch just for me, I would probably leave the grapefruit out, maybe add some of the juice, but I'd rather eat a scone and a grapefruit separately.

Here's the dough pre-oven. 

And I totally forgot to take pictures of the scones after they came out. But they were tasty. So tasty that there is now nothing left of them. But I do have 2 new brunch staples. That I can confidently bring over to someone's house!