Monday, March 7, 2011

Muffin of the day


For years, I’ve been working at mastering “the muffin”, and until recently, it’s been a fruitless endeavor. Instead of light, airy, well-rounded muffins with heaping tops, time after time, I pulled dense, flat "pucks" out of the oven.
Finally, this week, there is cause for celebration in my kitchen; I have baked muffin worth writing home about.  And even better, the recipe is versatile: using the same ingredients to make the base, it can be adapted in more ways than I would dare to imagine. Yesterday’s creation was a fig-ginger-pumpkin variety, and today I used the leftover pumpkin combined with zucchini. I was so impressed with the crystallized ginger that tomorrow I am going to try it with carrots and apple.
I have had to adjust the amount of baking powder, and I now use pastry flour exclusively instead of all-purpose. And lastly, the most important thing I have learned is that unsalted butter trumps oil in muffin recipes.

1 comment:

  1. Wow...these look unbelievable! The Carrot Apple Ginger sound delicious...some of my favourite ingredients. I'm still trying to master a fluffy, well-rounded wheat-free muffin. I may be testing for a while. Keep it up!!

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