Red, White, and Blue Muffins
These are prettier if you use white flour and white sugar, but I think you sacrifice flavor and texture if you do. As presented here, these muffins come out a homely dark brown, and should be moist and fragrant.
I bake these on the Fourth of July, at the end of the early black raspberry season and the beginning of the wineberry season, when the two harvests overlap. The berries I freeze for winter's use go fine into this recipe after a quick thaw and draining. The black raspberries are small and have blueish juice [blue], and the wineberries are medium raspberries [bright red] that are slightly tart. I just buy dry, sweetened, flaked coconut [white]. [Sorry, no coconut groves in Virginia.]
You need a cupcake baking pan with a dozen cupcake papers ready to use.
Preheat oven to Farenheit! 350 degrees
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup all purpose white flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
Sift and/or stir the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl, so that the leavening has no lumps and gets thoroughly dispersed. Then stir in:
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
a pinch each of ground nutmeg and ginger [optional]
Set aside.
Beat two eggs with a fork until they are just frothy. Stir into the eggs:
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/3 cup smooth applesauce
1/2 cup light cooking oil [corn, saflower, canola, or mixed vegetable]
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Combine the wet and dry ingredients. Add:
1/4 cup blue or black berries
1/4 cup red berries
1/2 cup flaked coconut
Spoon batter into one dozen cupcake papers in cupcake pan.
Bake in medium convection oven, about 15 to 20 minutes. These should rise with domes well above the papers, and are springy on the surface when done.
What a lovely, lyrical recipe! I love the addition of applesauce, partly because I have about three tons of cooking apples in the garage 
and also because I imagine they are the ingredient which make these soft and moist. I bet they look gorgeous too, steaming and fragrant out of the oven (sometimes things never get a chance to cool in this house.)
I'm also pleased to see measurements in Cups, as a few years ago Jay bought me a lovely set of cups to use as I was always bemoaning that American recipes used that measurement, which seems really odd to us Brits who will look bemused and say 'but what size cup?' 
Thanks Asy, I love swapping recipes 
I'm a bit concerned whether this will translate well, first and foremost because my oven [which came with Vandevanter House when we bought it] is indeterminate decades old. I wonder whether the "temperature" setting on this miserable clunker has anything to do with reality. So either the time or the temperature may need adjusting on this recipe.
I cheated and used the Buffalo Weather Service Fahrenheit converter rather than trusting my brain for the arithmetic. 350 degrees Fahrenheit is 176.66666666666668 Centigrade. Does that sound like a medium oven on your side of the pond? How many recipes in your kitchen ask for that many decimal points of accuracy? 
Oh, for tons of apples lolling about the place. We have planted dozens of apple trees, but none of them are mature yet, so we still have to get fruit at the store or the "Pick Your Own" over tah Purcellville.
And this is a true recipe swap, because I've been using your Yorkshire Pudding recipe to grand effect.
Got your own measuring cups? There ya go!
My folks when they first got married were living at Oxford, post-war. The Mom gathered some wonderful recipes from friends and family on both sides of the pond, but particularly recipes that had few or no eggs since they were rationed food items. And she took some time to convert the weights in her Brit recipes to volume measurements.
I still keep my family recipes [some are generations old] in a nice wooden box, although the NET does beckon with electronic versions from time to time.
I used to have a cooker that was graded in Farenheit! 350F is converted/rounded up to 180C in cookery books - not that I think in such numbers - I think of it as 'twenty past' because that's where it is on my dial.
Your cranky cooker reminds me of the conversation I had with my next door neighbour, who has ripped out every modern thing in her kitchen and put in old ones - I looked at her (very beautiful) Aga, and asked what it was like to cook with. There was a little pause, and she said 'well.... it;s not precision cooking' which I thought told its own story very nicely
We don't have any apple trees ourselves here either. but my other nextdoor neighbour allows me to plunder her garden regularly. She is a (difficult) sweetie, about 80, with an intellect sharp as a razor - and she lets me raid, over the year, rhubarb, cooking and eating apples, pears, strawberries, runner beans, walnuts, and tomatoes from her beautiful garden. And holly and mistletoe at Christmas! The holly is laden with bright red berries this year and bringing it home is always the start of Xmas for us.
No muffins here yet- been out buying the Scholars' Dinner dress today, for hours - but will report on success or otherwise - maybe with a pic!
Oh definitely with a pic, if you please. We are pleased as punch for the academic honors and the banquet event.
Maybe I will exchange photos as well as recipes with you. There is a 2008 Halloween photo of my rocket scientist spawn and meself, dressed as flamingoes. We are extremely dignified, highly edified-looking birds, as you might imagine.
The costumes got us into the top ten finalists list for the masquerade contest at the 930 Club. And first prize was tickets to all the concerts for a year, which we would have enjoyed.
But they hadn't had the final judging by half past midnight, with the fourth band of the concert still roaring out, and we had the long drive from DC to Northern Virginia still ahead of us. So we withdrew from the competition, in spite of the management's trying to persuade us to stay to the end. [sigh, so it goes...]
I meant a pic of the muffins 
but shall doubtless post proud pics of daughter and dress also
I loved the flamingoes story! creasing up here at Asy and spawn as dignified flamingoes! we do definitely want to see that pic - if you dare 
Disappointed you had to withdraw before you discovered whether you were Top Birds.
Won't be able to make muffins tomorrow, either, as I have to make an emergency dash to Oxford on the Dawn Train to fix a misbehaving laptop. Hence no Puzzles tonight... but will do better tomorrow!