I love everything and anything orange.  It's my favorite color.  My favorite flavor.  My favorite scent.  I love it so much so that I can even be found popping up in an orange juice commercial for about 3 seconds.  If you see an ad for Florida's Orange Juice, don't blink, you'll see me!

So, when I opened up Pioneer Woman's new cookbook and found Marmalade Muffins, I nearly fell off the bar stool in my kitchen I was so excited.  Pairing my favorite flavor with a sweet morning breakfast treat ... now THAT's a happy moment.  Pioneer Woman is pretty much a household name in any food bloggie's world, but for those of you that have not yet had the delightful opportunity, click here for an introduction.  PW is one of the first blogs I ever read (if not THE first blog) and I always find her writing makes me smile.  I had the awesome opportunity to meet her live and in person at the BlogHer Food party in San Fran during our recent trip to the west coast.  Her new cookbook was a gift to attendees and between BlogHer and driving through Napa my waistline has grown at least an inch since that trip.  Good thing I've got  marathon training to slim it down again!

What was I saying before that long tangent and reminiscing about San Fran?  Ah ha!  Back to the orange muffins ... I was all ready to make them that very instant until I read an ingredient that I never keep in the house ... buttermilk.  I had a bad experience with it as a child.  When I was a little girl, I used to love drinking my grandmother's coffee cream.   She would keep it in a little tin creamer jar in the refrigerator and I would always sneak in a sip or two off the refreshing cold spout.  That is ... until she discovered what I was doing and realized my little 4 year old lips had inadvertently graced every single cup of coffee poured in the house!  Then she started putting the little tin creamer just out of my reach.  I thought I had outsmarted her once when I found what I thought was cream, but then took a big swig of buttermilk.  BLAAAAH!   After that, until I out grew my cream addiction, I only drank cream from the individual plastic thimble-sized versions in restaurants.

So, needless to say, buttermilk has never been a staple item in my refrigerator.  Now, Ree includes instructions for how to "make" buttermilk, or a substitute if you don't have it.  But I thought it was time I made amends.  Besides, I needed to get some fresh oranges.

Florida navel oranges are what's in season, and if you've never had a navel orange allow me to introduce you.

Some have "innies"

Some have "outties"

(And this one has a honker of one for sure.)

And that's why they call them "navel."

You'll notice that they're a little blemished.  Florida oranges usually are.  But what they lack in exterior skin perfection on the outside compared to their California cousins, they more than make up for inside with juicy sweetness.

While my grandmother was over at my house teaching me how to make Rhubarb Jam, we made a batch of these muffins too.

Here we go, starting with blending together the butter and sugar.  Nearly all of  PW's recipes have butter in them.  Quite frankly, I don't know how she stays so fit and trim.  But she does  live on a ranch and has 4 kids to raise ... so I imagine there is a lot of calorie burning opportunities there.

Now, just because they're described as "mini" muffins doesn't mean I had to pull out such a small bowl.  I probably just pulled it out of the cabinet because it was orange.  Sheesh. Have to transfer to something larger.  My grandmother is shaking her head giggling at me at this point and mouthing off some thing in French I can't understand.  :oP

We mixed together the dry ingredients ...

Added the buttermilk and other wet ingredients ...

Zested up some navels ...

And WOOOOOOW.

I've never worked with batter so "fluffy" before.  It's light and whipped and soft and creamy.  I'll have to try buttermilk in place of regular milk in some other recipes now too!

My grandmother couldn't help taking a taste ... caught orange handed!

Now, since PW made mini muffins, I thought I'd try out a new iron pan that my mom gave me over a YEAR ago!  Now so new, huh?

They look delish, but my grandmother shook her head and said, "Rachelle, there is too much in those."  I thought, how could a tablespoon of batter possibly be "too much?"  She was right though.  They sort of exploded into a gigantic pancake completely covering the pan and dripping over onto the bottom of my stove.  Thank goodness I had a cookie sheet there to catch the drippings!

So, we poured another batch in regular muffin cups and THOSE turned out delish!

Drizzled on top is a quick and easy topping of orange juice and brown sugar.  Next time though, I think I'll try this  citrus glaze that I used on scones before.  After all, you can never have enough orange!

In case you were wondering if you've ever seen me blip across your tube in an OJ commercial ... here's photographic evidence!  Just please don't associate me with flu season.  LOL!

This is me with Dave.  And yes, he's a real live bonafide Florida citrus grower.  SERIOUSLY!

And there's me.  In my orange shirt.  Told you I love the color.  But if I ever dye my hair carrot red/orange please tie me up and smack me silly.

Here's the scoop for PW's Marmalade Muffins!  I cant' wait to try the other comfort food yummies she has in her book. Yum!

Marmalade Muffin's from Pioneer Woman Cooks

Ingredients

2 oranges

2 sticks of butter, sorftened

1 cup sugar

2 large eggs

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup buttermilk

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

Directions

1) Grate the zest from both oranges.

2) Mix the butter and sugar together in a large mixing bowl until creamy.

3) Crack in the eggs and mix until well combined.

4) Sift and add your flour into the bowl and stir together using as few strokes as possible so the muffins aren't tough.

5) In a small cup or bowl, combine the buttermilk and baking soda.

6) Add the buttermilk mixture to the muffin batter and mix until just combined.

7) Add the zest and mix until combined.

8) Grease 24 mini muffin tins (or 12 regular muffin tins) and fill 2/3's full with muffin batter.

9) Make for 12 to 17 minutes until golden brown.

10) While muffins are baking, prepare the glaze.  Juice the 2 oranges and add to the brown sugar in a medium bowl.  Stir until combined but don't worry about dissolving the sugar completely so that it will give it a grainy texture.

11) Drizzle the glaze over the muffins as soon as they're done.

Oooh and Aaaah.

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This citrus icing is finger-licking-good.  It's sweet zestiness will ... as my Mom says ... knock you into next week.

The ingredients are dangerously simple.  I say dangerous because anything that tastes this good and is so quick to make can't be good for your diet.

The ingredients ... just three.  A 1lb bag of powdered sugar,  an orange (for zest and juice) and orange extract.

Pour the sugar into a mixing bowl.

Zest your orange and add to the sugar.

Next, cut the orange in half and juice. Add the juice to your powdered sugar and zest.

Now for some zing.

The zest and juice add some flavor,

but the orange extract turns the citrus up about 10 notches.

Try it out on the blueberry citrus scones.  Then lick the bowl.

Mmm.

--Rachelle

Every time walk through the grocery store I can't pass by the produce section without being lured in by these berries.  They're in season right now, so how could I pass up 2 pints of this colorful goodness?  They make a great low fat snack for munching while working on your computer or watching a movie.  But this recipe ... is definitely NOT of the low-fat-guilt-free diet variety.  But they're worth every calorie!

Besides, when you look at the ingredients ... some milk, some orange juice, some eggs ... you can convince yourself that this is a healthy breakfast.  Right?  Well ... at least believe me when I say that they're super delicious.

This recipe was sent to me by Deanna at The Old Hen Bed & Breakfast in Seattle.    I have the entire ingredients list and instructions at the bottom of the post.  Enjoy!

See!  I told you!  Look at all the healthy stuff going into these scones!  Just ignore the 2/3 cup of sugar and all that flour.  It's invisible.  You don't see those extra calories ... you just get to enjoy the flavor.

Add in your dry, "invisible" ingredients ...

Pay no attention to my clumpy sugar.  I store it in the fridge as to not attempt bugs to enter my kitchen.  So it's clumpy.  And cold.

Baking Powder.  Doesn't it look fake?

Mix them all up until you've got a nice powdery batter.

Next, zest your orange.  Watch your knuckles.

Using the same orange, cut in half and juice.

After adding the fresh orange juice (isn't this starting to smell wonderful!), break open the eggs and add them to your dry ingredients.

Mix.  I'm doing this by hand ... working on those forearms of mine.

The word "chopping" and the word "butter" just don't seem to go together.  I supposed my chilled butter warmed up a bit too much while we were prepping ... cause my description would be more of a "mash."  Using any chopping/mashing style you choose ... your butter needs to end up in little bits.

Gently fold it into your nicely forming dough.

Deanna recommended getting fresh blueberries and freezing them over night.  I couldn't agree more!  Freezing them helps them not explode/burst when you add them to the dough.

Now, can you guess how frozen blueberries behave?  The sweat.  Naughty little things.  Coating them in some flour will keep them from getting stuck in your dough and make them nice and pretty little berries.  Kinda like powdering your nose.

But I forgot to flour/powder my hands!  Ugh!

Ah well.  Nothing wasted.  A little taste, a little hand washing and I'll get right back on track.

Form your dough into a ball and then press into a "disk" shape.  Don't ya just love photo examples?  I'm a "visual" person, so when Deanna wrote "disk" shape I had to wrinkly my nose and scratch my noggin ... but I got it!

Place your scones on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.

I'm using a baking stone.  Don't forget to dip your fingers in flour as you're picking these up!  Unless, of course, you like to eat the raw dough.  I'm not judging!

Bake them at 400 degrees for 45 minutes.

And now ... the moment you've been waiting for ... the most divine thing I've ever licked off a plate ... orange icing!

For the recipe, click here ...

For the food porn ... keep scrolling.

That first one didn't last long enough for the mint and blueberry garnish.  It was scooped off the place and devoured before the icing even had time to pool on the plate.  And then we licked it clean.  Here's another one.

Oh yeah!  This is going on my list of favorites.

Thank you Deanna!

See the full recipe below.

--Rachelle

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Ingredients

2 3/4 cups of flour

1 tsp salt

1 tbs baking powder

2/3 cup sugar

1/2 cup of chilled butter

3/4 cup of heavy whipping cream

2 large eggs

zest of one orange

juice of one orange

1 pint of fresh blueberries (freeze them overnight before using)

Directions

1) Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees F.

2) Combine dry ingredients.

3) Add heavy cream and eggs to dry ingredients.

4) Zest one orange, then cut in half and juice.

5) Cut butter into very small pieces and mix into dough.  Don't over mix.  Butter should be about the size of peas when you are done mixing it into dough.

6) Coat fresh frozen blueberries with a light dusting of flour then add by folding gently into dough.

7) Place about a cup of flour onto counter and place half of dough on it.  Coat dough lightly with flour and form a round disk with the dough.  It should be about 10 inches around.

8 ) Cut circle of dough into 4 sections.  Remove excess flour from scones and place on cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.

9) Repeat with second half of dough.

10) Bake at 400 degrees for about 45 minutes.

11)  Add orange icing and serve!