Cinnamon Coffee Cake Muffins

 

I struggled a bit with this month’s muffin recipe. Originally I was planning on making a new recipe with seasonal ingredients and being all “green” like that. Since I’m from Minnesota I associate January with a complete dearth of living things, so the spice cupboard is where I went to for this month’s “seasonal ingredient:” cinnamon.

I believe I have built up a tolerance for cinnamon, as I thoroughly love the spice. Andy thinks I over-use cinnamon on pancakes, in granola, french toast, apple sauce and oatmeal. He is just silly. Cinnamon is always welcome in those foods and more.

The Simple and Complicated Life of Bread: Part I

When I tell people we make our own bread they usually respond with, “Do you have a bread machine?” (that’s if their first response isn’t “You can make bread?”). Depending on my level of snarkiness that day, my usual response is: No, I have a husband. Now, I know that not all husbands make bread, but I’m pretty sure all wives would be jazzed if their husbands did. To clarify, when I say we make our own bread, that truly means my husband, Andy, makes our bread. Despite the fact that Andy prefers to be the sole bread-maker, bread making has changed both our lives. Bread may have simple ingredients, but bring fresh loaves into your life and you may get complicated (and delicious!) results.

You may start with bread, but you'll end up making pizza dough...

Andy’s bread making began with the convergence of two books; Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food and the larger-than-convenient Country Wisdom and Know-How. In Defense of Food provided the “why” of making your own bread, and Country Wisdom and Know-How presented the “how.” Andy and I both began reading labels more often at the grocery store, trying to purchase foods with the smallest ingredient list possible. We did really good at picking better foods and it was shocking to read about all the “food” we didn’t realize we were eating. One trouble spot was bread. The only bread I found with a short ingredient list cost $5 and wasn’t practical for a recent grad.

... or even spinach spaghetti!

Commercially made breads have ridiculously long ingredient lists, all to make one of the world’s most basic foods softer, whiter and sweeter. From Country Wisdom and Know-How we learned that bread is really simple (in addition to learning about how to build a rabbit hutch and weave baskets). It’s made of four basic ingredients: flour, yeast, water and salt. Andy wanted to make bread that would be inexpensive yet more nutritious than anything we could buy, so he set to work.

Andy is a tinkerer at heart and bread is an infinitely tinkerable food. This is a hobby that was destined to last. Since he started making bread he owned it. Bread is his territory, and I can be invited in, but it’s not my business. Though I am all about the taste testing. We began to buy bread less and less and with Andy’s first few loaves we realized that bread has taste, good taste, it’s not just a stale encasing for sandwich bits.

Not all bread needs to be loaf shaped, it can be braided, pretzled, or just smushed into an oblong form

To be honest, there were some bad aspects of the early breads. As with any new activity, things are not always going to turn out perfectly. A lot of my early sandwiches were held together by mustard and cheese slices, the bread was too crumbly. It took practice, patience and time. The bread was so delicious that I was fine picking it up in pieces from off the table to eat, instead of in the “traditional” slice form. We stopped buying bread altogether and would run into troubles when Andy was on bread making hiatus, we learned to live without.

Our revolutionary mixer and a honey whole wheat loaf resting.

One of the biggest breakthroughs with the bread came when we got married. A wedding gift from his parents was a KitchenAid mixer and it revolutionized our bread options. We had a garage sale bread maker at one point, but the loaves turned out large and cube-like and really didn’t improve the process that much. The mixer on the other hand was a fantastic addition. Recipes from Shirley Corriher’s Cookwise were put into rotation and delicious honey whole wheat and focaccia loaves made their way into our lives. We were eating better than ever and quite content. Andy tinkered with abandon on his recipes and I lunched on sandwiches that stayed together.

An option for a focaccia lunch, prosciutto wrapped asparagus, with dipping sauce, and of course beer.

Believe it or not there’s more to our bread lives! I’ll let you know all about the glories of stone ground flour and mayhaps share a recipe. Because it just wouldn’t be fair to talk about all this delicious food without sharing.

Muffin Madness: Runner Muffins

I received a request! This was the one and only muffin request for the month of madness, so it had to be obliged. My brother, who is training to run Grandma’s Marathon, requested a muffin that he could eat before and after a run. Preferably one that had oatmeal, banana and no nuts. To me, such a muffin should be fairly healthy and sustaining. This called for whole wheat flour and no refined sugar. It takes your body longer to break down and digest whole grains, and honey raises your blood sugar slower than refined sugar, so honey would be the only sweetener for these muffins.

Using honey instead of sugar is a bit tricky. This website was the most helpful at making the substitution. The key to cooking with honey is to realize that it’s also a liquid and takes care of some of the liquid in the recipe, as well as the sugar. It is acidic so you need more baking soda. Additionally, it browns quicker than white sugar, so turn your oven temp down 25 degrees. I did not heed this warning and the edges of my muffins crisped and almost burnt while the insides were still cooking. I’ve adjusted the oven temperature for the recipe to follow. One more thing about honey, is that it’s touted to help mitigate allergies, and local honey is best. This may not be scientifically proven, but who cares, it can’t hurt.

While my brother requested no nuts, and I actually don’t like nuts either, I was tempted to add almonds because I have a new found love for them. We had some sliced almonds already for making granola, so I borrowed some of those, whacked them a bit in a plastic bag and came up with some nice crushed almonds. I dislike eating something soft and coming upon a hard, unwelcome nut. Which is why I chose to crush up my almonds. You can add any nut you like to this recipe or skip them altogether. If you keep the nuts they’ll had some more health benefits. The sliced/crushed almonds blended well with the shape of the rolled oats, so they didn’t interfere with the texture of the muffin much.

An ice cream scoop is a handy tool for doling out batter.

Please note the wonderful texture of the batter, mmmm!

Really, this is a great recipe if you’re looking for a good healthy, sustaining muffin. Also, if you have anger that you need to get out, mashing bananas and smacking a bag of almonds is cathartic. But if they’re healthy they probably taste like cardboard, right? NO! These are quite delicious. The official muffin taster enjoyed them and said that they didn’t taste healthy. Which I take to mean that they didn’t taste like cardboard. At work these little gems went surprisingly quick considering I touted them as “good for you.” Bear in mind, I have no science or data to back up my claims of health. However, what is good for the soul must also be good for the body.

Banana mashing: more stress relieving than yoga.

Some recipe notes: I found a banana oatmeal recipe that used allspice for seasoning, most banana muffin recipes didn’t have spices and I found this intriguing. As a result of our canning last summer, the only allspice we had was whole, and I was too lazy to grind it up (I already ground the flour, that’s quite enough). So I smelled the allspice, realized it smelled a lot like cloves, which I did have, and I used those instead. It’d be lovely to try these with allspice too, but you can really use whatever spice you like. Also, my bananas were fairly large, so I used two. You don’t need an exact amount of banana, but if you feel your batter is too dry or wet, adjust the amount of milk you use to make it all okay.

The Stuff
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup rolled oats
½ cup sliced raw almonds, left as is or bashed up
2 ½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
½ tsp allspice/cloves/whatever you like
2 ripe bananas
1 egg, beaten
½ cup milk
½ cup honey
¼ cup butter, melted
1 tsp vanilla

The Process

1. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, oats, almonds, baking soda, salt and spice. Make a well in the center.
2. In a medium bowl, peel (I shouldn’t have to tell you that) and mash the bananas. Add the beaten egg, milk, butter and vanilla, whisk together thoroughly. Add the honey (this is where a kitchen scale is really useful) and stir together completely.
3. Add wet ingredients to dry and carefully combine. Once all ingredients are incorporated, divide into muffin tin until just to the top, there should be enough batter for 12 muffins.
4. Bake in a 325 degree oven for 15 to 20 minutes. Turning once. Stick a toothpick in them to make sure the centers are done, but don’t be confused if you hit a banana chunk. I believe these are best after being fully cooled.

Enjoy!

Muffin Madness: Brie and Beer Muffins

I like beer. That’s not a shameful thing to admit. I don’t believe in the philosophy “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere” (after all, why wait for 5 o’clock?). Just because I like beer doesn’t mean I drink 40s out of brown paper bags or pound back the beer and whiskey shots with the union boys after a day on the docks. No, no, no, the image of beer is changing with growing interest in craft beer and home brewing. This is a great thing as it raises the taste/quality bar for the mass produced golden fizzy water producers. I like this trend and would enjoy seeing craft beer lifted to the heights of artisan wines. I heard that scoff wine aficionados!

Ingredients, just hanging out waiting to become delicious muffins.

What does this have to do with muffins? Well, this week’s Muffin Madness is focused around beer and using it in non-traditional ways in muffins. While perusing through beer muffin recipes I noticed the most common accompaniment to beer in muffins is good ole cheddar cheese. Cheddar is fabulous if done right and you can have artisan cheddar, but I wanted something different. My lactose-deprived mind wandered through the cheese section of the grocery with delight. It was decided that the cheese of choice would be brie. No real reasoning or logic, just brie. Also, it does have nice alliteration, Brie and Beer Muffins.

If these were really to be savory muffins I needed more than brie and beer. So I took out my spices, gave them a good sniff and settled on a combination that suited my senses. I chose a combination of rosemary, sage and garlic powder. If you’re not satisfied with those options, come up with your own! It was actually quite fun to figure out what I liked.

This is what it looks like when you make your own wheat flour. Add some wheat berries to your mill and...

with a little elbow grease you get flour!

Remember how this mad month of March is meant to be a challenge? I will make 2 batches of muffins a week (sweet and savory) and I will also come up with the recipes myself. Well, after the success of the Chocolate Chip Porter Muffins, my ego inflated a bit - OK, a lot - and I was certain all recipes would turn out the first time around. That’s not quite how it works in real life. Though these muffins turned out delicious, they are not quite ready for mass consumption.

Batter with cheese chunks.

Seeing the cheese bubble in the oven was really enticing and a certain Official Muffin Taster hovered around as the muffins were taken out. For whole wheat muffins they ended up being fluffy and light, and the pockets of cheese were really satisfying. With that said, they ended up a bit too sweet for intention to be savory. Also, they only made 10 muffins, ten! That’s no good. A clean dozen or more is required for decency. My next go around I will increase the flour, amp up the spices and work out the leavening.

Only 10 muffins?! This is socially unacceptable.

Despite the muffins not turning out perfectly right, this is the fun part. Tweaking a recipe, taking a bite and asking, “What could be better?” My Official Taster and I even got into the existential question, what is a muffin truly? Even though I don’t have a recipe for you do not despair. It is currently written out with many revisions and changes for the next time. I’m actually quite excited to try them out again.