Nectarine Rhubarb Muffins

One of the many great things about the Passion For Baking book is the muffin section which is just full of decadent sounding muffins guaranteed to make your mouth water. The title of this recipe in the book is actually Bake-Shop Sour Cream-Rhubarb Peach Muffins, which I finally got around to making.

Of course, I had ripe nectarine instead of peaches, but close enough. My next dilemma was that I was out of sour cream -- something I usually have on hand. No bother, I could simply substitute plain yogurt instead... or so I thought until I realized that I didn't have a full cup of it. Well... crap. Luckily, in the back of the fridge I found a container of blueberry yogurt that was still good... blueberries go well with rhubarb so I just went for it. (That and I didn't have much choice at that point...) It also turned out that I didn't have oranges to zest for this either, but I just used some orange oil instead. Oh, and I added some walnut for some crunch...

I am normally very good about trying a recipe as written before tweaking it, but as it turned out I "adapted" this one quite a bit. The good news is that the muffins were still excellent. Tart and sweet with that great peach/nectarine flavor. The book has you covering them with a fondant frosting, but I ended up skipping that since they were so good plain.



Ingredients
** Note ** this is the way the recipe was written in the book
3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 1/3 cups sugar
2 large eggs
3/4 cups buttermilk
1 cup sour cream (or yogurt -- flavored or plain)
3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
4 tsps baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup chopped rhubarb
3/4 cup chopped peaches
1 tsp minced orange zest

Preheat oven to 375. Grease muffin pan.

In a mixer bowl blend butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Blend in eggs, vanilla, buttermilk, and sour cream until smooth, 2 to 3 minutes. Fold in dry ingredients and when almost mixed, fold in fruit and zest.

Scoop into muffin pans and bake for 30 to 35 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes before turning out of the pan to cool completely.