Recipe: Sesame Corn Muffins

Sesame Corn Muffins

I'm completely crazy for corn. Corn on the cob, corn sautees, tofu corndogs, and of course cornbread and corn muffins. Mini-me and I were plotting some of those muffins the other morning, and the inspiration struck to add sesame seeds. Sesame and corn go great together, emphasizing the earthy flavors in each. We added them to the batter and sprinkled more on top.

A couple of notes about ingredients. This recipe, based on one from Joy of Cooking, normally calls for buttermilk. I didn't have any on hand, but I had Saco buttermilk powder, which is quite convenient to keep in your refrigerator. I used that according to the package directions - 2 1/2 T. of powdered buttermilk to 2/3 c. of water, but that made the batter a bit thin, so in the recipe below I've dropped the water a bit. Add the powder to the dry ingredients and the water to the wet.

Sesame seeds are sold either hulled or unhulled, and either toasted or raw. I used hulled, untoasted ones because that is what I had. But any of the choices will work. If you use untoasted ones,  you might want to give a quick toast to the ones that go in the batter for more flavor. Don't pretoast the ones for the topping, or they might burn.

Recipe: Sesame Corn Muffins
Makes 12 muffins
Vegetarian, not vegan or gluten-free

• 1 1/4 c. coarse or medium cornmeal
• 3/4 c. all-purpose flour
• 1/2 c. sesame seeds + more for topping
• 4 T. sugar
• 2 t. baking powder
• 1/2 t. baking soda
• 1/2 t. salt

• 2 eggs
• 2/3 c. whole milk
• 2/3 c. buttermilk OR
  1/2 c. water and 2 1/2 T. buttermilk powder OR
  2/3 c. yogurt
• 3 T. vegetable oil

1. Preheat the oven to 425 F. Convection is fine if you have it.
2. Line a 12-muffin pan with paper cups or grease with butter.
3. Combine the dry ingredients in one bowl. If using the buttermilk powder, include it in the dry ingredients. Stir thoroughly
4. Combine the wet ingredients in a second bowl and stir thoroughly.
5. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, and mix just well enough to moisten. It is ok if there are some lumps. Do not overbeat or they will become tough.
6. Sprinkle lots more sesame seeds on top. See the picture above.
7. Divide the batter in the 12 cups, and bake until a toothpick comes out clean. About 20-25 minutes normal, or 15 on convection.

Recipe: Banana Muffins With A Crumb Top

Banana Muffins With A Crumb Top

Most banana muffin recipes seem too sweet to me. I want to taste banana, not overpowering sugar. This version is a composite of several recipes, putting together all the bits that we like (borrowing the most from this one at Allrecipes). Mini-me had a great time sprinkling on the crumb topping, which has a few flakes of sea salt in it.

By the way, how do you like that vintage Melmac serving plate? I have a few hundred pieces of the stuff, the remnants of an even larger collection from my post-college years. I think I'll start busting them out for more blog photos.

It occurred to me afterwards that caramelizing the bananas first to bring out even more of their flavor might be good. That or using some of the smaller, intensely flavored bananas that good stores carry these days. If anyone tries either of those ideas, please comment and let me know how it turned out!

Banana Muffins With A Crumb Top
Makes 10 muffins

    Dry:

• 1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
• 1 t. baking soda
• 1 t. baking powder
• 1/2 t. salt

    Wet:

• 3 ripe bananas, mashed
• 1/2 c. brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/3 c. unsalted butter, melted

    Crumb topping:

• 1/3 c.  brown sugar (preferably something delicious like Muscovado)
• 2 T. all-purpose flour
• 1/8 t. cinnamon
• pinch or two of flaky finishing salt (like Maldon), optional
• 1 T. butter

1. Preheat oven to 375 and grease or line 10 cups of a muffin pan
2. Mix the dry and wet ingredients thoroughly and separately
3. Fold the dry into the wet, without mixing any more than necessary to combine. Overmixing will make them tough. Fill the muffin cups.
4. Cut the butter into the rest of the crumb topping ingredients like you were making pie crust, and then sprinkle evenly over the batter.
5. Bake about 20 minutes until a tester comes out dry.

Recipe: Pie Dough and Ganache Cookie Towers

Let's consider the problem:

1. I have a bit of leftover flaky pie crust dough
2. I really want something chocolatey, but quick
3. I'm obsessed with circle cutters

Solution:

The cookies above. Recipe: Cut out pie dough with a successive series of cutters, starting at maybe 2.5 inches down to the smallest size you have. Bake til golden brown. Heat up a small amount of cream, pour it over finely chopped chocolate, wait a minute, whisk, spread on the bottom of all of the circles except the largest, stack 'em up, watch Get Smart reruns while unstacking and experiencing mild glee.

Extra credit:

Use a squeeze bottle to decorate a plate with any extra ganache.

Welsh Cakes from Alford and Duguid's HomeBaking

Mini-me started the morning with my favorite refrain: "want make something!", which means she'd like us to cook something together. I was a bit bored of our regular muffin routine, so I pulled out Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid's HomeBaking thinking of scones and settled on something related but a bit different, the "Welsh Cakes" you see above.

I don't have the author's permission so I can't reproduce the recipe here, but the basic concept is somewhere in the neighborhood of a typical biscuit or scone, but with no baking powder or soda, and all the liquid coming from eggs. They are flavored with the usual sweet spices (nutmeg, cinammon, ginger, cloves) but also get a little spike of black pepper, and are baked like pancakes on the stovetop in a skillet instead of in the oven. The recipe called for currants but I was out, so we used chopped dried blueberries instead. The results were delicious: buttery, both moderately flaky and tender, and with a fairly intense flavor unscathed by the typical chemical aftertaste from the leavenings. According to Wikipedia, this unleavened variation is more correctly known in Wales as a "Llech Cymreig".

Alford and Duguid's strong point is to bring together a big group of recipes via a theme and tie them together with photos and tales of their travels. I'm a big fan of all of their work. The HomeBaking book focuses on rustic baked goods from around the world. Nothing in here is meant to be pretty in the way of fancy pastries, but they all have an earthy and honest beauty that is easy to appreciate.

That said, there were a couple of nits I might pick with this particular recipe. First, it calls for 2 extra-large eggs. It is pretty much a universal standard that recipes use large, not extra large. I just used 2 large and they turned out just fine. If it had called for 3 XL, I probably would have used 4 L. Also, it tells you to roll them out 1/4" thick, and that you will get 12 or 13 cakes. I don't think they measured, because a full 1/4" would only give you about 8-10 cakes. I find this is the case with many recipes that call for dough to be rolled out, and you have to use your own experience as a baker to see how thick they should really be.

Notwithstanding these pet peeves, both the book and this recipe are outstanding.

On The Mathematics of Bran Muffins

A truism that I hear repeated frequently that cooking is an art, while baking is more of a science which requires accuracy and following recipes to the letter. I don't think that is necessarily true, I certainly improvise changes to baking recipes frequently and usually with good results. But I think there is an underlying element of truth, which is that with cooking you can generally imagine what will result from a change, whereas with baking it can be much more difficult for us amateurs to predict.

That got me thinking about just how many variations there might be for something as simple as bran muffins. Let's start with a bran muffin recipe I've used before with good success and try to calculate how many ways they could be made. Obviously there are actually effectively infinitely many variations - you could add just one more molecule of baking soda. My goal is to get a rough count of distinguishable variations that a sensitive human could tell apart.

To get started, here are the ingredients:

• 1.5 c. wheat bran
• 0.5 c. yogurt
• 1.5 c. milk (preferably whole milk)
• 1 egg
• 4 T. blackstrap molasses
• 1/4 c. brown sugar
• 1 c. all purpose flour
• 1 t. baking powder
• 1/2 t. baking soda
• 1/2 t. salt

Let's take the amount of wheat bran as a given, and then we can adjust the ratios of all the other ingredients to it. For the yogurt, milk, molasses, sugar and flour let's assume we could use 25% less, 12% less, the same amount, 12% more, or 25% more. Already that is 5^5 = 3125 combinations.  For the egg, let's say we could use 0, 1, 2, or 3, so that is a factor of 4. For the baking powder and baking soda let's assume 4 variations of each, and the salt is assumed to be equal to the baking soda, that's 16 more options.

Of course that is assuming a fixed set of ingredients. We could use cereal bran flakes or oat bran, whole, part skim or fat-free yogurt or sour cream, and the same for the milk, or soy milk, any of a dozen kinds of brown sugar, maybe 4 kinds of molasses and maybe 4 distinguishable kinds of white flour, not to mention that you could whole wheat, or spelt, or teff.. We could use honey or agave nectar or half a dozen other sweeteners. We could add some applesauce for additional moisture. That is 147546 more combinations, not even considering that we could add fruit or nuts or seeds.

Then let's figure that there could be at least 3 levels of how thoroughly we mix the batter, 3 of how big the muffins are (which affects the surface area to interior ratio), 4 types of pans, 6 oven temperatures, and 4 variations of how deeply brown we cook them to, for 784 more options.

That gives us a grand total of 23,135,212,800,000 ways to make a basic bran muffin! 23 trillion ways. And I believe those are legitimate differences, meaning that a reasonably sensitive taster could tell any two of them apart in a head-to-head comparison, and tell you which of the two they thought was better. And if anything, this is probably an underestimate given how conservative some of the assumptions above are.

So what conclusions can we draw from this? I guess one is that there is real value in a recipe. Someone has been willing to put a stake in the ground and say "this is the best bran muffin out of 23 trillion options!" And on the flip side, there is value in experimenting, as there is real reason to believe you can improve your baked goods. Since you clearly can't explore that number of variations, the best way to experiment is hold all other variables constant and change just one thing, like the milk or the type of flour over a few batches, and keep track of which one you like best. Of course that would miss any second-order effects like preferring whole milk with bread flour but skim milk if you used pastry flour. That is just the chance us muffin scientists will have to take!

Chocolate Cupcakes With Cream Cheese Filling And Chocolate Gelato

We have officially entered the Snacky Pants birthday celebration period, which extends approximately 30 days on either side of the actual anniversary of her entrance to this world. We've kicked in to high gear a bit earlier than usual owing to our rapidly approaching trip which will separate her from many of her usual admirers during this important holiday. Brother and CatWoman feted her with gifts, and I was directed to produce both chocolate cupcakes with a cream cheese filling and a chocolate ice cream. Normally I would have wanted to go to vanilla or some sort of caramel ice cream, but one does not argue with the birthday girl.

Simply Desserts, in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood is famous for their chocolate cream cheese cupcakes, and in fact I'd just eaten some at a going away party that my office crue held before my leave of absence started. So the flavor was fresh in my mind when I started searching, and I settled on this recipe at recipezaar.com. The only change I made was to use chopped Guittard bittersweet chocolate instead of the chips. I was slightly skeptical of the vinegar, and could taste it faintly when they were warm, but no-one seemed to mind, though I'm not sure why the recipe wouldn't just call for baking powder instead of or in addition to baking soda. These cupcakes were super moist and tasted even better after a day in the refrigerator.

For the ice cream, I once again turned to Fanny over at Foodbeam.com and followed her recipe for Willy Wonka's Everlasting Chocolate Gelato. Wise call. This time I used Scharffen-Berger unsweetened bar chocolate and Lake Champlain cocoa powder, and pressed brother into service  separating eggs and whisking and manning ice water baths while I began removing the general sheen of chocolate from the whole kitchen. The result was astonishingly rich. If you have a chocolate itch that this doesn't scratch, you may need to be hospitalized for your own safety.  As my friend Stu says, "dzaing main"! The only problem we had was that it really needs some freezer time to harden up, and since we started cooking late in the evening, we ended up eating it in semi-souplike form, even after a brief attempt to quick freeze on a baking sheet. Anyhow this only made it quicker to deliver the chocolate punch straight to our arteries. The picture above was taken the next day, at the "proper" texture. Yes, I re-lit the candle for verisimilitude. Clearly I need one of those ice cream freezers like they have on Iron Chef that can go from custard to ready to serve in 20 minutes.

Snacky Pants and all of the other revelers reported full satisfaction and an inability to sleep due to chocolate overload. Mission accomplished.

Caramelized Pear "Cupcakes" With Blue Cheese Frosting

I was on my way out the door to work the other day and for some reason I said to Snacky Pants, "what would go with Blue Cheese Frosting?", and she gamely replied "pears of course". And then I was thinking of a great post (that I can't seem to find) that Dana had over at tastingmenu.com about a meal she prepared that was all sweet savories and savory sweets. I love the idea of that. Here's my first try at this concept. I used puff pastry and caramelized the pears in a skillet, making alternating layers. Then I added smoked Spanish paprika (pimenton dulce) and baked them in mini muffin tins. For the icing I mixed about 1/3 Pena Azul (a Spanish blue cheese) with 2/3 plain cream cheese and a bit of lemon juice, and topped them with a few grains of the red Hawaiian Alaea sea salt. Verdict: pretty good, not bad for a first try at a totally new area of cooking for me. Definitely fun but I think the flavors need a bit of refinement. Also I bet using phyllo instead of puff pastry would be appealing. I didn't have mini parchment cupcake wrappers, but that would add to the effect, and clearly I should take more care in piping out the frosting. I think the Pena Azul is too salt, I think I would try a Gorgonzola Dolce instead. You could serve them an appetizer with a good sherry. Here's an approximate recipe:

Caramelized Pear "Cupcakes" With Blue Cheese Frosting
Makes 6

• 1/2 lb. homemade or frozen all-butter puff pastry
• 2 ripe but still firm pears
• 1 T. sugar
• 2 t. smoked spanish pimenton de la vera (dulce) paprika
• 1/4 c. Pena Azul Gorgonzola dolce or other blue cheese
• 1/2 c. cream cheese
• 1 T or so lemon juice
• red Hawaiian Alaea sea salt for garnish
• butter

1. Preheat oven to 350 and butter 6 spots in a mini-muffin tin
2. Slice the pears about 3/16" thick, skipping the core
3. Find a couple circle cutters the approximate size of the top and bottom of your muffin tin. Cut 6 small and 6 larger circles of pear. You'll have lots of pear leftover to eat.
4. Heat a skillet on medium, add a bit of butter, and after it melts, sprinkle in the sugar. Add the pear slices and cook a few minutes on each side, til nicely caramelized.
5. Again with the circle cutters, cut 6 small and twelve larger circles of puff pastry.
6. Put a small piece of puff pastry in each muffin tin, top with a slice of pear, and add a pinch of the paprika. Repeat, and finish with a layer of pastry.
7. Bake about 15-17 minutes until golden brown
8. To make the icing, just warm both cheese in the microwave for 30 seconds or so until beatable, add the lemon juice, and go at it with a small whisk until smooth. Don't put any salt in the icing because you want to be able to garnish with it. Taste and adjust.
9. Cool the cupcakes, remove from muffin tins, and pipe on the icing with a pastry bag or cut the corner off a small ziplock. Top with a few grains of the red salt.

Foodbeam Sables Au Chocolat with Fleur De Sel

I've been thoroughly enjoying Fanny's Foodbeam blog lately, and when I needed a straightforward chocolate dessert for dinner with Mini-me's cousins tonight, I thought I'd check her archives. Sure enough, there were these great looking Chocolate Sable Cookies with Fleur De Sel. Fanny warns that they might induce some form of rage but it was a chance I was willing to take. Boy am I glad I did, they are superbly chocolatey and the salt provides a subtle counterpoint. I used my favorite Maldon sea salt, and Guittard bittersweet chocolate. And as a bonus, this solved a little mystery for me. 20+ years ago when I lived at the Green Gulch Zen Center and Farm in Marin County, we used to make a little mocha cookie that I loved. I tried to figure out the recipe years later and never quite hit on it. Now I realize that it was a sable technique, with the sandy texture from the sugar and no egg or liquid to dissolve it.  (Sable is from the French word Sablee which means sandy). I'll have to make these again with an espresso flavor and see if it is close. Another nice bonus about the eggless recipe: you know you can safely eat the dough and let your kids lick the spoon! Be sure and follow her advice to take them out before they actually look done, they firm up a lot as they cool and this is a case where the flavor is coming from the chocolate, you aren't trying to caramelize the sugars.

And by the way props to Fanny for providing the recipe by weight, that makes it go so quickly and  accurately. If you don't have a kitchen scale, here's a digital one that we own and I get much use out of. It is small enough to live on your counter, but big enough to weigh up to 2 Kg / 4.4 pounds, and accurate to the gram. If you do have one, I want to make sure you know the trick for working quickly with it. Let's say you need 100g of flour, 40g of sugar, and 50g of cocoa powder mixed together. Turn on the scale with its bowl and pour in flour until you hit 100g. Leaving the flour in the bowl, "tare" the scale (reset it to read 0). On the scale I mentioned above that is a simple click of a button. Pour in sugar until it reads 40g. Tare again and add the cocoa until you reach 50g. Fast, spot-on, and no dirty meassuring cups!

Totally unrelated note. How great is the Pacific Northwest? In Seattle I can play golf, and kind of hope I fade my ball a bit to the right along the fenceline, so I get to eat handfuls of perfectly ripe blackberries while I wait for my partners to take their second shots!

Sables Au Chocolat with Fleur De Sel (Chocolate Sable Cookies with Sea Salt)

Top Ten Ways to Get Yourself Baking More at Home

Everyone loves home-baked sweets and savories, but most of us don't take the time to make them very often. Here are some suggestions to help make it happen:

1. Have all your ingredients as accessible as possible. Store all-purpose flour in a large bin with 1 c. and 1/2 c. measuring cups right in it, so you don't have to find them and wash them. Do the same for other bulk items that you use frequently such as white and brown sugar. Whole grain flours should go in the freezer if you don't go through them quickly, but you can still have them in quick-access containers.
2. Also, have a tray in your cabinet with the baking soda, baking powder, salt, honey, molasses and other accessory items all gathered in one place. When you have everything ready like this, you are always only 15 minutes from putting cookies, muffins, scones, quick breads etc. in the oven!
3. Have at least two sets of measuring cups and spoons, so that if you need the same size twice for one recipe and it is already goopy with syrup, you don't have to stop and wash it.
4. Bake with kids! Whether it is your own little ones, nieces and nephews, or whoever, they all love to help out in the kitchen. Baking is one of the easiest ways, because it doesn't usually involve knives or hot saute pans, and you can set all of the ingredients out on the floor. They will be proud of what you made together, and you'll be proud to give them something wholesome for a meal or a treat.
5. Buy the tools that will inspire you. I'm not saying you need every gadget out there, but having good cake, pie and tart pans, muffin tins, cookie and jelly roll sheets, ceramic pans, ramekins, silpats, rolling pins, etc. makes life a lot easier, and the results look better too.
6. Treat yourself to books that will inspire you as well. My current favorite is Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid's Home Baking.
7. Don't be a perfectionist. Not everything that comes out of your oven is going to look like something from a 3-star pastry chef. So what? It is delicious and you put love into it. In a world where so many things are mass produced, making something for your friends and family to enjoy is all that matters.
8. Bake (most) things until they are really brown! The best flavors in baked food comes from the Maillard reactions and caramelization that take place in the last few minutes of cooking. Don't burn everything, but do let it go that last couple minutes to deep brown. You'll be amazed at how good it tastes.
9. Let seasonal fruit and vegetables inspire you. Summer of course is the time for berry pies, tarts, crumbles and slumps. Fall might find you with a surfeit of apples, and in winter, savory cheese and vegetables appeal. Like all cooking, starting with the best ingredients is the key.
10. Make extra dough and freeze it. If you are making a pie crust, a crumble top, or cookies, why not double the batch and put half in the freezer? Label that zip-loc bag so you'll remember what you've got and how old it is.

Recipe: Seriously Molasses-Flavored Bran Muffins

Seriously Molasses-Flavored Bran Muffins

Sometimes all you really need in this world is homemade bran muffins. Especially when you and the kiddo make them together first thing in the morning. We like to put the mixing bowls out on the floor, and Mini-Me stirs them and fills the muffin tins. There's nothing much better than watching how excited she gets when we put them in the oven. From the second they go in, she can barely wait for them to come out and have breakfast!

This recipe is heavily based on the one in Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid's Home Baking book, which I owe you a full review of, but we can preview by saying "it rocks". I changed it by using yogurt instead of sour cream, quadrupling the molasses, and not waiting the 30 minutes for the bran to soften, though I'm sure it is a good idea. Good luck getting your kid to wait a half an hour!

I'm a firm believer in a strong molasses flavor in a bran muffin. In Providence, where I went to college, there was a great old store with a lunch counter that would split a big molassesy bran muffin in half, grill it til it started to burn, and slather it with butter. Oh yeah. These muffins come out small, so you might want to double the recipe and make maybe 15 bigger ones, adjusting the baking time of course.

By the way, you know who else rocks the party? Bronze Fawn.

Bran Muffins

Makes 10 small muffins

0.5 c. yogurt
1.5 c. milk (preferably whole milk)
1 egg
4 T. blackstrap molasses
1.5 c. wheat bran
1/4 c. brown sugar
1 c. all purpose flour
1 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt

Preheat oven to 350. Mix all the wet ingredients with the bran. Whisk together the remaining ingredients in another bowl and then mix them into the wet. It will be a very thick batter, almost cookie dough. Scoop into 10 buttered or lined muffin tins. Bake about 18 minutes, until golden brown, pullling away from the tins, and dry when checked with a toothpick. If you convection bake it will be more like 13 minutes.