Earth Day Muffins - total time 45 minutes

Earth Day is April 22nd.  Do you do anything to celebrate?  Some people plant a tree (well, they might do that on Arbor Day which is April 26), others spend time outside (which is a win-win since you don't have to use electricity to enjoy the outdoors), or maybe commit to reducing, reusing, and recycling more.  I don't really do anything special on Earth Day... really, we should be thinking about the Earth and celebrating it everyday. But this year I made Earth Day muffins!

I actually saw a similar idea for this on Pinterest, although it was a cake with a lot of food coloring.  I thought maybe I could muffins with some natural coloring... but I couldn't get to a true blue or a true green without a little help.  The concept is pretty easy... start with a basic muffin batter, separate, add in your blue and green fruits and dyes, then plop alternating spoonfuls of muffin batter into muffin cups.  They end up looking so cute!  Perfect for Earth Day, but could be made any time!


.5 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp baking powder
2 eggs & 1 yolk
.5 cup creme fraiche
.5 cup milk
2 cups flour
1 pint blue berries
3 kiwis, chopped
1 tsp salt
food coloring

1.  Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Whip butter in mixer, add sugar, and cream together.  Add vanilla, creme fraiche, milk, and eggs together and mix until well combined.
2.  Add salt and baking soda.  Slowly add flour a little at a time until incorporated into batter.  Separate evenly between two mixing bowls.
3.  Heat half of the blueberries in a small pot with low heat.  Sprinkle a teaspoon of sugar over top. Stir berries every minute or so until juice is coming out of the berries and are easily smashed.  Strain blueberry syrup into muffin batter for the blue/ocean half.
4.  Add remaining blueberries and about 3 drops of blue food coloring to the blue mixing bowl and chopped kiwis and about 6 drops of green food coloring.  Add more food coloring based on preference.  Spray muffin cups with olive oil and alternate one spoonful of the colored batters until cups are full.
5.  Bake for 25 minutes.