Apple Bacon Muffins

Apple + bacon = delicious! The bacon in this recipe wasn't particularly prominent.Maybe it just needs a little more. I added a some crumble topping, and maybe I should have put some bacon in it to boost the flavor. They were definitely good enough to try again, and fiddle with the recipe a little.

Ingredients
½ C brown sugar
¼ C butter, softened
2 eggs
²/₃ C milk
2 C flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
2 T cinnamon
¾ C apple, finely chopped
½ C cooked, drained, chopped bacon

Directions
Preheat oven to 350˚. Spray muffin tin cups or line with paper liners.

Cream butter and sugar. Beat in eggs. Combine dry ingredients, then add to creamed mixture, alternately with milk. Fold in apple and bacon just until blended.

Fill muffin cups full. [Optional - top with crumble topping.] Bake 20 minutes. Cool 10 minutes in the pan, then remove to wire rack to cool completely.

Pumpkin Bars

Generally I bake these in a jelly roll pan (baking sheet with a 1" lip) and cut them into bars, though they're more cake-like in texture than like a bar cookie. I'd love a good pumpkin cookie recipe, but I've yet to find a good recipe that really has a cookie-like texture. Most of them are more cake or muffin like in texture. I baked some of these up like mini cupcakes recently (pictured), and that worked just fine too. 

Ingredients
1¹/₃ C sugar
4 eggs
½ C oil
½ C applesauce
15 oz pumpkin puree
2 C flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
½ tsp ground nutmeg

Directions
Preheat oven to 350˚. Grease and flour (or coat with non-stick cooking spray) a jelly roll pan or line with parchment.

Blend first 5 ingredients until smooth. Combine dry ingredients, including spices; add to pumpkin mixture. Pour into prepared pan, smoothing and spreading as needed to an even depth.

Bake 15 to 20 minutes until center is dry (the 'clean toothpick' test works here).

Top with sweetened whipped cream, cream cheese frosting, or a simple powdered sugar icing.
Or do like I did: I didn't use a recipe for the topping...just blended cream cheese with some maple syrup, a little cinnamon, folded in some whipped cream...