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NEWLY Rediscovered Recipe from a Legendary Hometown Cafe

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This old-fashioned muffin recipe is packed with apples, carrots, raisins, coconut and almonds, with a cinnamon oat and almond topping. Renee makes the original A.M. Delight Muffins from the Brown Bag restaurant in Rockland, Maine.

FREE RECIPE CARD DOWNLOAD:👉 https://www.kitchenintheshire.com/public-recipe-library/the-brown-bag-am-delight-muffins

If you love homemade muffins, apple muffins, breakfast muffins or old-fashioned bakery recipes, this one has a story behind it. The A.M. Delight Muffin was served at the Brown Bag, a longtime restaurant in downtown Rockland, Maine.

The Brown Bag opened in 1987 and operated for 28 years before closing in 2015.

And we found the original published recipe.

These are hearty breakfast muffins filled with finely diced apples, freshly grated carrots, raisins, coconut and almonds. Renee shows you how to make the muffins from scratch, including preparing the apples and carrots, mixing the batter, making the cinnamon oat and almond topping, portioning the muffins and baking them for the right texture.

The recipe itself survived. But finding it led us back to the people who made the Brown Bag part of the community.

The restaurant was opened by four sisters: Anne, Barbara, Claire and Debra. As we began looking into the Brown Bag and the people who remembered it, one thing kept coming up. It wasn't simply a place to eat. It was one of those local restaurants where people knew one another, the staff knew the customers, and the food became part of people's routines.

In this episode, we recreate the Brown Bag's original A.M. Delight Muffins and look at the restaurant, those that followed it, and the community that surrounded it.

If you remember the Brown Bag in Rockland, Maine, or ever ate one of its A.M. Delight Muffins, tell us what you remember in the comments.

Real Life Human Narrator: Damon Webb

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 - Intro

02:09 - How to make browned butter

05:50 - How to make the crunchy muffin topping

07:50 - How to make the muffin batter

11:21 - How to combine the mix-ins for the muffin batter

13:59 - How to build the muffin mixture

17:23 - How to prep and fill the muffin pan

18:27 - How to apply the muffin topping

19:37 - Baking instructions

20:27 - Taking them out of the oven and transferring to the rack.

22:47 - Close ups, taste test, and reaction

25:07 - QR to the free recipe card download

25:23 - Renee Missed the Joke, but laughed anyway

PRODUCTS AND INGREDIENTS USED IN THIS VIDEO:

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ABOUT KITCHEN IN THE SHIRE:

Kitchen in the Shire investigates lost recipes, forgotten restaurant recipes, historic cookbooks and food memories. Renee brings these recipes back into the home kitchen while we investigate the people, places and stories behind the food.

BIG THANK YOU TO OUR SOURCES & MEDIA FRIENDS:

PenBay Pilot

👉https://www.penbaypilot.com/

WABI-TV

👉https://www.wabi.tv/video/2026/04/23/put-down-device-pick-up-dice-munching-meeple-debuts-camden/

NEWS CENTER Maine / WCSH 6

👉https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugNIkimihxM

Hugh Blackmer

👉https://oook.info/HKC/

Home Kitchen Café

👉https://www.homekitchencafe.com/

The Munching Meeple

👉https://themunchingmeeple.com/

Burpee, Carpenter & Hutchins Funeral Home

👉https://www.bchfh.com/

Wikipedia

👉https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockland,_Maine

Apple Maps

👉https://maps.apple.com/?q=Rockland%2C%20Maine

Additional archival and reference material:Facebook, Yelp and other publicly available business and community listings.

All third-party photographs, video, maps and archival materials remain the property of their respective creators and rights holders.

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