Category Archives: muffins

November 16, 2010

Everyone’s Muffins

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        It’s a grey, blustery day in Maryland (hence the sky replacement for the poorly lit pictures I’m not too happy with). I woke up indecisive about what to bake. With Thanksgiving fast approaching something suited to that holiday seemed appropriate but I’m just not in the holiday mood quite yet. Maybe it’s because this will be the first Thanksgiving I spend away from family. It’s time for Lee and I to start our own traditions!

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        I guess I’m working my way up to Thanksgiving because today’s muffins are dinner table appropriate, or a great start to a long day in the kitchen. As an added bonus (or a requirement at some tables), these muffins are vegan. Laurel’s Kitchen included vegan recipes back when even vegetarians were still considered wackos. Everyone’s Muffins were so named for their acceptability to all diets, even those that exclude milk and eggs. Hey, they’re also great when you’re in Maryland and you haven’t been to the grocery store since New York! Actually, I went to the store yesterday but I still really wanted to make these muffins!
        This is the second time I’ve made Everyone’s Muffins. I followed the recipe exactly the first time but tweaked one ingredient for this batch. The leftover brown rice in the ice box caught my eye and was much more accessible than the master supply of oats I’d need to raid since I just emptied the container in the galley. Cooked brown rice seems like a nice addition to bread. It adds that chewy rice texture, fiber, and protein. In retrospect, though, I should have adjusted the amount of liquid in the original recipe because my muffins turned out very. very moist. They will probably be better after sitting overnight but the rice obviously didn’t absorb as much liquid as uncooked oats would have.
        Oh well. They taste good and they’re good for us. I love “un-sweet” muffins like these. You can butter them up and slather them with jam (or cranberry conserve, perhaps). Eat one for breakfast, serve them with dinner, make muffin sandwiches – these are as versatile as muffins get.

Everyone’s Muffins (Oatmeal Variety)
From Laurel’s Kitchen by Laurel Robertson, Carol Flinders, and Bronwen Godfrey
Makes 12

1 1/2 cups warm water*
1 tablespoon active dry yeast
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons oil
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 1/2 cups rolled oats*
2 pinches nutmeg

*I replaced the oats with the same amount of cooked brown rice. If you do the same, try decreasing the amount of water by 1/4 cup or so.

Dissolve the yeast in the water in a large bowl.
Add the salt, oil, sugar, and whole wheat flour and beat well.
Add the oats and nutmeg and beat vigorously (you’ll have a batter not a dough).
Cover the bowl with a towel and leave it to rise in a warm place for at least an hour.
Stir down the batter and spoon it into lightly greased muffin tins (or use silicone cups in a muffin tin. I think paper would stick).
Let the muffins rise for about another hour.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. and bake muffins for about 20 minutes. The tops will be brown and crusty.

If I make these with rice again I’ll decrease the liquid and maybe increase the baking time. Maybe I’ll just try the other variety of Everyone’s Muffins – Buckwheat! Now I need to focus on more pressing matters…

Any suggestions for a vegetarian Thanksgiving for two?

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November 3, 2010

Jammy muffins and a wild week

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        Finally – a chance to sit down and write something! A week isn’t really that long to go without a post but I’ve really missed my blog, not to mention all the fabulous blogs I love to read! There was really no way for me to sit down at my computer this past week, let alone bake something to write about. MuffinEgg has undergone a visible change, though. I joined Foodbuzz and Lee took care of the technical hosting set up. Things are still under construction so you may see more changes in the coming weeks.
        Lee and I had a traumatizing passage on our boat last Friday that left us shaken and discouraged. We faced some serious wind and waves and spent half the night trying to get to shelter before things could get any worse. If you’re interested, you can read the full story here.
        After what felt like a near death experience, I needed some serious baking therapy. Warming up the boat with the oven was also a motivating factor, since it’s been ridiculously cold for the past few days. Muffins were first on the to-bake list. Lee had requested “stuffed muffins” so I decided to inject my cranberry conserve from last week into some whole wheat muffins. We have been really enjoying the conserve on toast and in PB&J sandwiches. I wish I had more than two jars of it left!
        I wanted to try the whole wheat muffin recipe in Joy of Cooking for my jam vehicles. It’s a simple recipe with room for lots of variations. My variation ended up halfway vegan out of necessity. Lee ate the last two eggs that morning so flax took their place. I did use regular milk but you could make these muffins completely vegan by simply using non-dairy milk.
        Biting into a sweet, tangy pocket of cranberry conserve makes these muffins gooey and satisfying. The batter isn’t very sweet but the nutmeg makes it more than just a vehicle for jam. I think I’ll be playing around with jam-filled muffins more from now on.

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Jam-Filled Whole Wheat Muffins
Adapted from Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker

1 2/3 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons flaxseed meal + 1/4 cup water
1 1/4 cups milk + 1 teaspoon vinegar
1/4 cup honey or agave
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
Your favorite jam or preserves

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F

Whisk the flours, baking powder, and salt together in a large bowl.
In a separate bowl, combine flaxseed meal and 1/4 cup water, allowing it to sit for a few minutes.
Add the vinegar to the milk, then combine milk with the flax mixture, honey, and oil. Beat until well blended.
Pour liquid ingredients into dry ingredients, stirring briefly to combine.
Spoon into muffin cups lined with paper or silicone liners, filling each about half full.
Add a teaspoon of jam to the center of each muffin.
Cover the jam with the remaining batter.

Bake in a 400 degree oven for 20-25 minutes until lightly browned. (Mine did not rise above the edges of the cups so don’t worry if they’re not getting huge)

        Hopefully I’ll be a little better connected from now on. Our internet access has been problematic and it was harder than I thought it would be to get back into the rhythm of transient life.

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October 25, 2010

Pear ricotta muffins: Round 2

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        Every muffin deserves a second chance. After my oven disaster last week, I had to give the poor muffins I undercooked a chance to redeem themselves. The pear ricotta combination was just too good not to try again and the ingredients were still taking up space in my tiny fridge.
        I made a few changes to the recipe I made before, reducing the buttermilk and a few other things. I kept the ricotta amount the same to preserve the richness and flavor it provides. Regrettably, canned pears were my only option this time around. The pears I bought the other day are like rocks but I have cans coming out of my ears. Most importantly, I used the celsius oven thermometer that came with the boat to make sure the oven was preheated before I put the muffins in. Lesson learned!
        We had a couple friends over for dinner on the boat last night and we all enjoyed round 2 of pear ricotta muffins for dessert. I got the boat all warmed up by running the oven all evening.
        Here is the newly revised recipe, as well as some better pictures of my cheesy, fruity creations. This time the batter comfortably fits in 12 cups. The baking time is still a little on the long side. I guess the ricotta slows things down.

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Pear Ricotta Muffins
Re-adapted from Cherry Ricotta Muffins from Mollie Katzen’s Sunlight Cafe.

1 cup part skim ricotta cheese
2 eggs
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons pumpkin puree (or butter, melted and cooled)
2 cups flour (I used about 3/4 whole wheat pastry – all I had left – and 1/4 whole wheat)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1 can of pears in juice, drained and chopped very small (or 1-2 fresh pears, depending on their size)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
In a large bowl, beat the eggs into the ricotta one at a time.
Add the buttermilk, pumpkin, sugar, and vanilla.
In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and allspice.
Slowly stir dry ingredients into wet until barely mixed.
Fold in pear.
Spoon batter into 12 muffin cups with liners or greased with a little oil. The cups will be very full.
Bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes, or until the tops are brown and a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean.

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October 19, 2010

Pear ricotta muffins and a little extreme baking

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        I have a confession to make: I engage in extreme baking. What is extreme baking? Well, my definition involves limited tools, only the ingredients I have on hand, confined spaces, and lots of water. When you live on a sailboat, that sort of becomes the routine. It’s a routine I’ve been out of for the past few months since Lee and I have been staying with his parents in Maine while we got our boat ready for the grand voyage South to the Caribbean. Before that though, we lived on the boat in Rhode Island all last winter, sailed down to the Chesapeake Bay in the spring and summer, and then sailed up to Maine. I know. What a life!
        I won’t go into to much detail about the whole boat thing here; this is my cooking blog and this is my sailing blog. I will, however, be cooking on the boat and blogging about it because I think it’s as much of an adventure as the sailing itself!

        Finally, on to the muffins! After 30 hours or so of high winds, bouncy seas, and really, really, really cold everything I was ready for some good food. We’d been living on cold hot dogs, apples, and PB&J sandwiches because I was afraid to heat up a pot of soup on our pitching stove. Things had calmed down a little so I went below, dug out some ingredients, and started into a recipe that had been brewing in my head.
        Pear and ricotta cheese go together like, well, peanut butter and jelly. They are perfect for each other, delicious, and simple. I often ate pears and ricotta with my lunch last fall and winter. When I saw this recipe for muffins with ricotta cheese in them I immediately thought “But why are there no pears?”. Something had to be done.
        I salvaged a few very ripe pears from the house in Maine and padded them down with scrunched up plastic bags for their boat ride. They survived nicely.
        I made a few modifications to the recipe I started with to accommodate for the pears and my healthy taste. I wish I knew how they would have turned out if everything had gone according to plan. There was, however, a little problem with the oven. The boat oven is tiny. It has one rack and a burner on the bottom that I have to light by hand. When I started working on the muffins the other day, I lit the stove and set the temperature to 176 degrees C, or 350 F (the boat is Finnish so the temperature is in Celsius). I mixed all my ingredients, poured the batter into the muffin pan, and popped it in the oven. The oven was probably preheating for 15 minutes before I put the pan in. I set a timer for 20 minutes and when I checked the muffins at the end of that time they were still liquidy!
        The only explanation is that the oven wan’t preheated when I started baking. There is no thermometer in it but I used a removable one when I first started cooking on the boat last year. After I determined that it heated up to the right temperature I stopped using the thermometer. I guess I forgot how long it takes to heat up the other day though.
        I put the muffins back in, turned up the temp just to be sure, and baked them for another 20 minutes, checking them often. Then I pretty much gave up and declared them done. They were mostly done and they solidified a bit as they cooled.
        Lesson learned? Use the oven thermometer! I also think the batter was a bit too liquidy. I will not rest till I get this recipe right! Next time I’ll use a little less buttermilk and probably less pear as well. The good news is, even with their slightly soggy centers, these muffins are DELICIOUS! They are cheesy, sweet, and protein packed. Lee’s dad, who sailed with us for this passage, loves doughy things so he really liked these.

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Lee enjoying a muffin as we approached Newport.

Sorry for the unglamorous pictures. Food photography underway will take practice.

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This is also my recipe for Fall Fest, which I am really enjoying. Visit A Way to Garden to find out more.

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Pear Ricotta Muffins
Adapted from Cherry Ricotta Muffins from Mollie Katzen’s Sunlight Cafe.

1 cup part skim ricotta cheese
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
4 tablespoons pumpkin puree (or butter, melted and cooled)
2 cups flour (I used about 3/4 whole wheat pastry – all I had left – and 1/4 whole wheat)
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon allspice
2 very ripe pears, chopped very small

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
In a large bowl, beat the eggs into the ricotta one at a time.
Add the buttermilk, pumpkin, sugar, and vanilla.
In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and allspice.
Slowly stir dry ingredients into wet until barely mixed.
Fold in pear.
Spoon batter into 12 muffin cups with liners or greased with a little oil. Cups will be very full (you could also make more like 16 muffins with less in each cup).
Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes, or until the tops are brown and a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean.

You might want to cut down on the liquids and/or pear. Using butter instead of pumpkin might also help. As I said, I’ll be experimenting with this recipe and I’ll post an update on my success.

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