Think Crafts Blog – Craft Ideas and Projects – CreateForLess

Congratulations to Jean Snider who was randomly selected as our Free Stuff Friday winner and will receive a prize pack of Bazzill Cardstock! Bazzill Cardstock is here to help you create beautifully colored cards, invitations, scrapbook pages, memory albums, journals, and more.

Use Bazzill Cardstock for all of your paper crafts projects. Bazzill Cardstock comes in a variety of shades and colors. Each sheet is acid-free. Follow our Paper Crafts Pin Board for paper crafting ideas!

Jean Snider’s winning answer to “When was your last road trip?” was…

“The first part of June we went to Bismarck to help our daughter with our four wonderful grandchildren while her husband was out of town for work. It’s about 4 1/2 hours each way. We plan to go in early Aug to accompany them into MN. I travel about 1000 miles a month for my work – but I’m usually home every night. ”

By Guest Bloggers Melissa + Kellie, from the blog Icing Designs.

There are just some flavors that are meant to be together. We both love the taste and smell of almond, which is a perfect flavor to bake with all year round! But, with summer in full bloom, so many of our favorite fruits are becoming readily available at our farmer’s markets! Sweet, juicy cherries are the perfect fruit to combine with the very versatile flavor of almond!

If you love almond you will definitely want to try this recipe, not only is the muffin flavored with almond and specked with real cherries, it is filled with the most amazing almond creme called frangipane! We used to make puff pastry filled with cherries and frangipane and we adapted it into a muffin recipe. These smell amazing when they are baking and are perfect for a brunch or even a late afternoon snack and a cup of perfectly sweetened coffee!

Frangipane Filling

• 1 cup almond paste
• 1 cup sugar
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 1/4 cup cake flour
• 1 egg {beaten}

Muffins

• 3 1/4 cups pastry flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 1/2 Tablespoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 2 teaspoons almond extract
• 2 sticks unsalted butter {melted}
• 1 cup pitted chopped fresh cherries or 1 bag of frozen {thawed} cherries

Pre-heat oven to 350. Line muffin tins with muffin cups, spray slightly with cooking spray.

Make the frangipane by just combining almond paste, sugar and room temperature butter in a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Add flour and egg and combine until it forms a paste.

Set aside. To make muffins combine all dry ingredients, combine wet ingredients and add wet to dry, mix just until flour is moistened. Fold in your cherries. Use a small ice cream scoop and add a small scoop of batter into your muffin cups, take a tablespoon of frangipane and roll it into a ball, put it in the middle of the batter and then add one more small scoop on top to cover it. Bake at 350 for about 20-25 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. Dust with powdered sugar if desired…these are amazing warm but can be served at room temperature too. Enjoy!