The challenge this month is… well, personal challenge. My biggest personal baking challenge is simply my kitchen. It’s small, with limited storage and nearly no counter space, which prohibits attempting certain things that require a lot of space, like croissants or strudel. So while I’d like to attempt those challenges, they’re just not practical.
Outside of recipes that require a better kitchen, I can’t think of any technical challenge I’d like to attempt at the moment. I do, however, still have quests towards finding the recipe for certain basic items. One of those is the perfect blueberry muffin. It’s a bit like chasing the end of the rainbow: it’s a moving target. On one recipe I’ll make a note that there are too many blueberries, while another recipe with exactly the same quantity will seem just right. Perceived sweetness levels vary from bake to bake of the same recipe, textures of the same recipe change from day to day… It’s a unicorn.
Previous attempts at muffin perfection can be found here and here. Today’s recipe is from a cookbook I’ve had for a while but never used, although the recipes it contains are the down-home types I prefer. True confessions, I didn’t follow the recipe exactly because I was in a hurry and didn’t want to be bothered measuring carefully and getting every ingredient exactly right. Also, I wanted at least a small health benefit, so I was hoping to substitute some of the white flour for oat flour or bran. (Not whole wheat flour because it adds its own flavor.) But digging through my dry goods, nothing oaty was making itself immediately apparent. I did find an unlabeled jar of some pale grain with a coarse grind that tasted mild. I hoped it was oat something and forged ahead.
I cut the original recipe in half to make 6 muffins and made a few alterations. Here’s what I used:
8 6½ tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons of a coarse dry good of choice (rolled oats, corn meal, bran,
etc.)
1/2 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
One large egg
3/8 cup whole milk
1/2 cup fresh blueberries
Preheat the oven to 350F. Lightly grease 6 muffin cups. Whisk together the flour, oatmeal, sugar, baking powder, salt, and cardamom; set aside. In a mixing bowl, whisk together the sugar, oil, butter, vanilla, egg, and milk. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until nearly combined, then allow to sit for a few moments to allow the liquid to be absorbed. Once thickened, fold a few more times to combine. Gently fold in the blueberries, being careful not to overmix. Scoop the batter into the prepared muffin cups and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until the muffins are golden brown. The tops should be firm to the touch and a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin should come out clean. Remove from the oven and let cool for 10 minutes before turning the muffins out. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Well, these didn’t turn out anything like the photo in the book. When I initially mixed the dry and wet ingredients together, the batter seemed WAY too wet, but it quickly started to thicken; I realized the grain was absorbing the liquid. But fearful of ruining the muffin texture, I didn’t stir the thickened batter together as well as I should have. Once in the pan, there was separated liquid floating on top that hadn’t been blended in. The muffins didn’t rise much, and this liquid flowed over the edges. It’s not a totally abnormal result, but it wasn’t what I was going for. (Pro tip: break off all these edges while they’re still crisp and eat them immediately. By the next day, though still tasty, the high sugar content will make them sticky and chewy—almost candy-like.)
These did not come out of the pan nicely. I had to cut through the overflow and release that carefully from the pan, but even the greased cups didn’t release the muffins—they were too soft. I had to scoop them out with a spoon. Fortunately, they came out in one piece, although there was a fair amount of crumb left in the tin.
Despite everything, these had a nice texture, and I
especially liked the nubbliness from the added grain. I was curious about the
slight corny flavor when the obvious struck me—the mystery grain! It was a nice
flavor (in fact I have a recipe for blueberry corn muffins), but did distract
somewhat from the blueberry focus. They were sweeter than I would like, not as
noticeable while warm, but far more so the next day. (Funny how that works. It’s
the unicorn effect.) I would cut back by 2 tablespoons (for 6 muffins) to
start. It was just the right amount of vanilla; I didn’t notice the cardamom at all, although it might have added something
to the overall back flavor. I think the combination of using oil and butter is probably smart: butter gives flavor while oil gives a moist crumb.
One bit of confusion was the intended pan size. I’m aware of only 3 sizes of muffin tins: mini, regular, and jumbo, each twice the size of the last. This recipe called for “large muffin cups”, which to me would have indicated the jumbo size, but the recipe obviously didn’t make that much. The directions were to fill the tins only 2/3 full; mine were filled to the brim. I really dislike small, short muffins, which is how home recipes pretty much always turn out. So perhaps there is another, intermediate (i.e. “large”) muffin pan for professional use, something between the regular dozen and the 6-pack jumbo. If so, I’d like to get hold of one. Two-bite muffins are so anti-climactic.
Conclusion: I really need to make these again, properly, following the recipe* (aside from reducing the sugar) to evaluate them adequately. They seem like a good contender, although more on the soft side than I would like. I think I’d prefer using salted butter, as I think it would bump up the flavor a bit and enhance the sweetness of a reduced-sugar recipe.
Recipe: Blueberry Muffins via The Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook by Cheryl and Griffith Day
*I think I messed up. If I recorded my measurements correctly, the recipe I made would have used only 1 cup of flour for 12 muffins, but the original calls for 2 cups. That would explain why my muffins were so flat and the batter so thin, and why they were so sweet. That's what I get for trying to bake first thing in the morning.
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