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January 21, 2007
2007: Year of the Muffin
Santa gave me a muffin tin this Christmas. I asked for it with the idea that I could make cupcakes and maybe make something that could serve as breakfast on the way to work. I've never been a huge fan of muffins, since they can be dry and too heavy in the morning (and perhaps a bit too close to cake to be healthy). But I figured that if I were in charge of the recipe, I might be able to make something acceptable.
Before I continue, though: What is the difference between a muffin and a cupcake? The latter is cake poured into a muffin tin, and is more likely to contain frosting, but if I make little lemon-frosted cakes...are they cupcakes or muffins? I did that with a meyer lemon cake mix from Williams Sonoma first (good, better with icing, but not fabulous), and wasn't sure which category they belonged to.
Regardless, I tried to make carrot apple muffins last week. I started with a Martha Stewart Applesauce Muffin recipe, since we had a good deal of applesauce to get rid of. Various things went wrong. First, creaming butter and brown sugar until it's "light and creamy" is difficult. My new mixer is rather excitable--it sends bits of batter flying upward and outward before it manages to mix things together.
Still, the major problem was my impulsive recipe altering. First, I decided that I wanted carrot-apple muffins, so I pulverized some carrots and added them. That probably didn't do too much damage. Next, I decided that I really wanted an apple cider flavor, since the applesauce wasn't going to add anything really intensely apple-y. So in went a little bit of cider. I got carried away, though, and thought that what I _really_ should do is cook the cider down so the flavor would be more intense. I should have know that I lack patience for that sort of project. By the time the cider started bubbling in a pot, I was getting antsy. And then it dawned on me that not only would that take a while, but I would have to cool down the liquid before adding it to batter. So, in my haste to get the muffins in the oven, the barely-reduced cider went into the freezer, and then into an ice bath....but it still wasn't exactly cool when I poured it into the batter. In a final flourish of culinary brilliance, I threw in a bunch of oats.
I'm never going to learn the basics of cooking if I pay so little heed to recipes: especially when it comes to the chemistry of baking. The muffins came out with a great flavor, but a rather dense, heavy texture. We ate them all anyway (the ground cloves in the recipe worked well). Going forward, I think I need to understand what proportions of sugar, egg, butter, and flour are needed to make a light, fluffy muffin. I probably don't have the patience to actually do that, though. My next muffin project will be blueberry sour cream muffins from the nostalgia-inducing Rectory Recipes cookbook from St. Paul's (more on that later).
Posted by csageday at January 21, 2007 03:37 PM
Comments
Heeeee.
I have to tell you, whenever I read your accounts of "I decided to make XYZ. Oh. Um. I changed it," I end up laughing hysterically.
I think maybe reading a good book on the underpinnings of cooking might help. There are lots of things you *can* change while baking, for instance -- substituting spices isn't a problem at all. But if you alter the ratio of fat to flour/starchy stuff to liquid, you'll change the texture of the final product a lot. You might like the change, who's to say -- but you won't have what the author of the recipe intended.
I recommend Cookwise, by Shirley O. Corriher. You can borrow my copy, to see if you like it before you buy it, even!
Posted by: Rose at January 21, 2007 05:57 PM
Well, ahem, I rather like to think of myself as a creative genius, but, um, yeah, I should probably borrow that book. I'm not making any promises about sticking to recipes, though.
Posted by: Cindy at January 21, 2007 10:52 PM