The Perfect Muffin

Today I reached for the stars and left them in the dust. I've been wanting to do this for so long!

I chose a recipe impulsively from the comments on another recipe website, and it worked out perfectly. I proved that hard work and not taking shortcuts is important for getting where you want in life: lacking orange juice, I squeezed my own from an orange, had a first impromptu solo flight with a super cute mini food processor, poured muffin batter from one paper cup to another, and trashed the kitchen. And then took about fifty pictures, they were that good (the muffins were good; in defense of taking so many pictures, many of the pictures were crap, which explains why I take so many. I'll stop taking so many pictures if someone wants to donate a digital SLR... :P).

It was SO worth it. Even people who ate zucchini loved it. They rose perfectly, were the best possible brown, were moist, delicious...I need to go eat another right now! Here's the recipe:

Zucchini Carrot Spice Muffins

1.5 c flour (I used 1/2 c white, 1 c wheat)
1.5 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 egg whites
1/6 c canola oil
1/2 c honey
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 c orange juice
1 c zucchini, grated or finely chopped (yay food processor!!!)
1 c carrot, grated or finely chopped (double yay food processor!!!)

Mix wet and dry well individually, then mix together just to moisten. Fold in orange juice and veggies only until combined. Bake at 370 for 15-20 minutes until beautiful brown and a tester comes out clean.

That's my batter at the last step; the puddles on the right are the freshly squeezed orange juice. I'm taking this success as a sign it's gonna be a great fall!

Apple Cinnamon Fun

When you wake up on Saturday at noon to a bunch of Cubans escreaming, this is what you should do.

Put 2 c all-purpose flour, 2 tbsp sugar, 3 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp salt, 3 tsp cinnamon in a bowl. Mix in 1.5 c milk, 2 egg whites, and 1/4 c canola oil. Then stir in a large granny smith apple cubed, and cook on low heat so the apples get cooked too. Even a mumsy who didn't think she would like them couldn't help exclaiming over the pancakes' excellence.

And then after that, you should do this:

Put 1.5 c rolled oats, 1/2 c packed brown sugar, 3 tsp cinnamon, and 2-3 tbsp melted butter in a bowl and then add half of it to a bowl with 3 large granny smiths chopped (note: I highly recommend peeling the apples, and then you eat the peels as a fun snack). Put the apple mix in a baking pan (8x8, 9x9, whatever), and then spread the remainder of the dry stuff over the top and bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes until the top is crispy brown and the apples are cooked. Remember to smell it before you indulge!

Granola Bars

Like (almost) everything else, this was an experiment. It was partially successful.

Like experiments, there were multiple conditions--two different methods of trying to make the granola bars stick together. One worked better than the other, but neither worked well. The mix was: 2 c rolled oats, 1/3 c wheat germ, 1/3 c wheat bran, 2 tbsp sunflower seeds, 2 tbsp sliced almonds, 3 tbsp brown sugar, 1.5 tbsp ground flaxseed, 2 tbsp melted butter, 1 tsp vanilla. A trick I learned from the KAF blog is to everything in a different place as a visual check of what you've added so you don't forget anything.

I mixed all this good stuff up and then split the batch in half. One half got a beaten egg white, the other 3 tbsp mashed banana. (This was based on a lack of critical thinking, as usual: I somehow managed to reason that since egg holds stuff together and is also something that adds moisture, something else that holds moisture should also hold things together. Don't ask.) Each half got pressed into a loaf pan. (Below, I think the egg version was the full one.)

After 25? minutes at 350 and 7 minutes to cool in the pan, I turned each out on the cutting board. The egg pan stuck together better than the banana pan, but neither stuck particularly well. I also realized that sunflower seeds don't really belong in granola bars. It's too bad but I've become quite a fan of the processed "food", sugar, oats, and chocolate chip version.

So, who has a granola bar recipe to share that doesn't have loads of sugar for holding everything together?

Experimental (Moosewood) Banana Bread

In retrospect, I don't know why this seemed like a good idea, but I was having a brief spell of actually being able to follow recipes, so I decided to give the Moosewood recipe for banana muffins a shot.

It looked innocent enough to begin with, and actually tasted fairly good.

It was similar to my normal recipe, but had a whole egg, and egg white, and half a cup of yogurt (= sour milk). It turned out to be, predictably, wayyy too moist. I may need to continue the experiment and put it back in the oven.... It still looked innocent, and oats on top are super cute. I loved the cracks in the top of the loaf.

Moral of the story: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Because It Wasn't Hot Enough

The plan was to make bread on the weekends. Oops.

This time, having conferred with a professional bread baking person, things worked much better. I used less water, and therefore less flour, slightly less yeast, and baked the bread at 400 instead of 350. I also kneaded it less, because 20 minutes, besides being REALLY hard sweaty work, might have been overdoing it. Most exciting, I finally got loaf pans! The loaf wasn't as *big* as I wanted, but I can attribute this to the size of the recipe since it was the perfect consistency.

And because of the loaf pans (I think having direct metal contact makes a difference) and the increased temperature, it was darker than before. So pretty!

And then, since the apartment wasn't hot enough, I decided the time had come to make granola! (Since I sillyily mistook granola for granola bars, that'll be happening soon too. Stay tuned!) Here's the mountain of granola; it reminds me of Vesuvius, in, maybe, 78 A.D.

Here's the recipe. As with most things, it's my rendition of a recipe I found somewhere among teh interwebs.

in bowl:
2 c rolled oats
1/2 c wheat bran (actually a bit more)
1/2 c wheat germ (actually a bit less)
1/3 c sunflower seeds (this was too much!)
1/3 c sliced almonds
3/4 tsp cinnamon (could be more)
1/2 tsp salt (probably unnecessary)

in pan:
3 tsp brown sugar
3 tsp water
2 tbsp butter
1/4 c honey

boil syrup, pour over dry stuff
spread in greased jelly roll pan and bake at 350 for 25? minutes

In the future, I'm going to try using a combination of applesauce and/or mashed banana instead of the oil.

I eat it as cereal, but you can also mix it with cottage cheese, yogurt, or make parfait!

Also pretty!

Blueberry Banana Muffins

Dear World,
   I know that I am crazy. I have in fact, known this for more than twenty years. You don't have to keep telling me. However, by all means, continue if you wish. I take it as a compliment.
Thanks,
   The Pteph
(Some people have been saying I'm crazy for turning on the oven to bread and muffins in 90-degree weather. How outrageous!)

Tonight's muffin experiment goes perfectly with the recent focus on adventure, for four reasons. First, I have never made muffins I was crazy about. Second, I was following a recipe only loosely and this involved severely messing with the amount of moisture in the recipe. Third, I was using frozen bananas for the first time. It was all sorts of disgusting. (I have never dealt with rock solid bananas. Then they sat in the 90-degree air and turned white as the condensation on the air froze on their peels. One thawed quickly in a bowl and was a mixture of water and mush, sort of like how rotten milk separates into layers. Another thawed too slowly and had to be run under warm water to get the peel off. It slid out of the peel like a continuous tube, interestingly seemingly to be held together in its center.) And finally, the batter looked absolutely disgusting. I took a huge risk and tasted it, hoping it would be good because only good things had been put into it. Thankfully, it was.

Blueberry Banana Muffins
~
½ c wheat germ
½ c wheat bran
½ whole wheat flour
¼ c ground flax seed
¾ c rolled oats
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1½ tsp cinnamon
~
2 egg whites
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp lemon juice + ½ skim milk
1/3 c brown sugar
1½ – 2 mashed banana
1 c blended blueberries (blend them with the lemon juice and milk)
~
mix wet and dry until just mixed
bake at 325 for20-25 minutes or until a test comes out clean
(makes six giant muffins)
 ~

The large intestine banana (sorry):

 

P.S. Niftiness, from nutritiondata.com 

(please ignore the sodium; I'm not sure where they got 500 mg from; there's only 1/12 tsp in each muffin...)