Eat My Muffin

As many Americans, over Thanksgiving I cooked and baked. A lot. I started Thanksgiving dinner Tuesday afternoon and finished Thursday. I made two pies. For two people. Why I saw the need for Beth and I to both have our own pie is a question that remains unanswered. Like, where did Agent Cooper go at the end of Twin Peaks? Why do I need my very own, very large pie? These are things that keep me up at night.

Moving on.

After all that chopping and sifting and rolling and boiling, I wanted to make something simple. Something quick and easy to appease my carb cravings. As I am still working my way through Baking with Julia, I tried out the two muffin recipes in the book.

First I whipped up the Buttermilk Crumb muffins. Who doesn't love a muffin with a crumbly top? It's all butter and sugar and delicious.

By reading the recipe I couldn't really tell what it might taste like, and I was hoping it would be kind of like a sour-ish yellow cake. It was not like that at all. Instead it was like coffee cake. Almost exactly like coffee cake. Except for the shape. I don't care for coffee cake. Beth likes it, though. And did she eat all 12 muffins? Yes. Yes, she did.

Here's the batter. I thought it looked pretty with the buttermilk, eggs, and crumbly flour mixture.



Here's the finished muffin. As you can see they have flat tops. Baking with Julia loves the flat topped muffin, as you will see with the next recipe as well.

The other night when Beth was working late I came home craaaving blueberry muffins and orange juice. When I was in junior high I would stay at my friend Kristen's house almost every weekend. When we got up on Sunday mornings we would whip up a box of Jiffy blueberry muffins and mix up some orange juice from the can. We'd park ourselves in front of the tv and pig out on those delicious little muffins. To this day, when I want something comforting after a long day (or in the morning after a long night), I still long for blueberry muffins and orange juice. So when I came home needing blueberry muffins, my instinct was to turn to my favorite recipe - Browned Butter Blueberry Muffins by Joy the Baker. But I stopped myself. I am still trying to work my way through Baking with Julia, so I begrungly decided to give that recipe a try.

It started out well enough. When I whipped up the butter and sugar as light as air I began to get inspired. I imagined sinking my teeth into delicate, buttery muffins. In fact, up to the point of baking the muffins I felt optimistic.

But when I pulled the dark brown, crinkled things from the oven my heart sank. The recipe said to bake them for 15-18 minutes. And when I took a bite of those bland ugly things, the dissapointment was immense. It was 8:30 at night, I had used all the blueberries, and there was no chance of making another batch. Never again. From now on, I stick to my very favorite blueberry muffin recipe... or the Jiffy mix.

If you would like to try these muffins, here is the Buttermilk Muffin recipe, and here is the Blueberry Muffin recipe.

Happy eating!