Sunday, November 24

How to Make Muffins Using Cake Mix



This morning when I went to the store to pick up my Sunday paper, as I was browsing through the high ticket items I regularly buy to see which of them were on sale (unadvertised sales happen all the time), I passed through the baking aisle and the boxed muffin mixes were calling my name. I decided that muffins for breakfast would be divine.

BUT... I didn't have a coupon, and although the mixes were on sale, I already had a mountain of cake mixes at home. It was hard to justify buying a box of dry ingredients essentially the same as what I had on stock, so I came home determined to figure out how to make muffins with what I already have. The result were home made muffins that were (dare I say) better than what comes out of the muffin boxes!

Here is how you can make your own muffins using boxed cake mix:

Ingredients:
1 standard box of cake mix. You can use any flavor, I chose Lemon cake.
1 egg
1/4 cup oil
1 cup milk
1 cup of frozen fruit. I used a mixed fruit blend that I had stored in the freezer. You could also use chocolate chips, peanut butter chips or nuts.

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 325. Empty the contents of your cake mix (dry ingredients) into a mixing bowl. Disregard the ingredient list on the box. Instead, add egg, oil and milk. Mix until batter is smooth, then add frozen fruit and mix until fruit is evenly distributed. Spoon batter into a muffin tin, until the wells are roughly 2/3 full. Bake for 25-30minutes until a toothpick inserted into the center of the muffin comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes, then remove from muffin tin and serve.

These muffins were so fluffy and delicious! I made 12 muffins and poured the left over batter into a bread pan and ended up with a nice small loaf of muffin bread. They got rave reviews from my husband and toddler, so I know these will be a regular in our house whenever I have spare cake mix handy.

Tuesday, November 19

The Season for Free (or Discounted) Turkeys!

Even if you aren't normally a couponer, now is the time to pay attention! If your family enjoys eating poultry then November and December are a great time to stock up on fresh and frozen turkeys. Most large grocery stores will run offers for "Spend $x.xx And Get A Free Turkey", and I've already gotten a couple of coupons from Coupons.com and through our weekly circulars for $3 off the purchase of a turkey when certain other items are purchased.

I already redeemed one offer for a discounted turkey this week. Fred Meyer is offering turkeys at a discounted rate if you spend over $50 on other groceries (I believe I paid $0.69/lb for my 15 pounder), or up to a 20lb turkey for FREE if you spend $150 on other groceries. It has been a LONG time since I spent $150 on a single shopping trip, but $50 is an easy spend and I think I paid about $10 for a turkey that would normally have been well over $20.

I plan to load up on free and discounted turkey over the next six weeks, and stock my freezer with good meat that will carry us into the spring. When else can you get good meat for under $1/pound??