Blue Cheese Walnut Muffins

One of my favorite salads has field greens (usually spring mix or baby romaine lettuce), pears or green apples, dried cranberries, red onions and walnuts and a nice balsamic dressing. When Bob and I were in Newport, RI on our anniversary weekend, we found this awesome little shoppe called Virgin and Aged. This store has olive oils, specialty oils, and vinegars that you can taste before buying. We were with a group of people and as soon as we saw the place, Bob and I headed into the store to see what they offered. Of course the others with us laughed knowing we were such foodies and couldn't pass up this kind of store.  The options were endless and seeing things like Dark Chocolate Balsamic vinegar or Coconut White Balsamic vinegar had our minds spinning on what we could make and use an oil or vinegar with. We walked out with only 2 bottles, a Cranberry Pear White balsamic and a Fig Balsamic vinegar. I had the above mentioned salad every day for lunch and paired it with the Cranberry Pear vinegar or sometimes the Fig vinegar. The salad was delicious. We even grilled steaks one night, caramelized onions, used the fig vinegar to add to the onions and made a reduction sauce, topped the steak with the onion/fig concoction and added a little blue cheese to it. Our plates were so clean you could have put them back in the cabinet. Bob and I are planning another trip to Newport just to pick up some more vinegar.

All that to say, that these muffins are a baked version of the salad I like to fix sometimes. Enjoy!

Ingredients: 2 c flour, 2 tsp baking powder, .25 tsp sea salt, 1 c sugar, 1 egg, .75 c milk, .33 c butter (melted), .25 hot sauce, 1 c crumbled blue cheese, .75 c finely chopped walnuts, .25 c dried cranberries

Instructions: (1) Preheat oven to 400 and prepare either a 12-c or a 6-c muffin pan with liners or cooking spray. (2) Whisk flour, baking powder, and sea salt, in a large bowl. (3) In a medium bowl, whisk sugar, egg, milk, butter and hot sauce until well blended. (4) Add egg mixture to flour mixture and stir until just blended. Fold in the blue cheese, walnuts, and cranberries. (5) Divide batter evenly amongst muffin cups and bake for 15-20 minutes or until tops are golden brown and toothpick comes out clean. Cool for a few minutes in the pan then cool complete on a wire rack.

*I usually add a little crumbled blue cheese to the top of each muffin before baking and serve the muffins while they are still warm.