At least, the best I've ever made.
I've done some ricotta muffins, some morning glory, some donut muffins and apple, and cornbread has always been a favorite. I've experimented with different recipes and methods and really hadn't quite settled on what I liked the best, as far as big, full-fat bakery muffins go. I had a recipe I really liked a lot this one from Fine Cooking, but it wasn't truly spectacular.
Well, the other day I tried out Shirley Corriher's Pear and Walnut Muffin recipe from Cookwise. (I've been working my way through that one. Like, I seriously take it to bed with me, it's dog- eared and I have tons of notes. It's my new bible.) Her recipe was remarkably different from anything I'd tried, and she uses her "secret ingredient"--whipped cream-- to really make them amazing.
Sadly, they didn't meet expectations, but it was completely user error. I didn't have bleached flour, which the recipe called for, and surprisingly that can make quite a bit of difference in a baked good. This muffin truly was so tender and moist (as she warned) that it was barely a cohesive mass! I ended up picking the roasted walnuts out of the pile of crumbs the muffins became. She said to stir vigorously--I guess she meant it! Also, I think that sometimes it's a matter of preference. Shirley is Southern, and I've heard that Southerners like their cakes moist and super-sweet, almost to the point of soggy. Much like Paula's too-tender Red Velvet recipe.
But I wanted to take the recipe she'd given--because as loose and soft as they were, they were totally delicious--and make it just a bit more stable. The two elements of a baked good that give it strength are eggs and flour, which provide protein. The elements that weaken and tenderize are the fats and sugars (and to some extent the liquids as well.) So I reduced the sugars a bit, and the fat just a little, replacing it with more yogurt.
I want to talk for just a minute about how to tinker with a muffin recipe. It's not the same formulas you can do with a cake, since what you want in a muffin is a bit different. I decided to treat it more like a bread dough, as it's considered a "quick" bread anyway. Are you familiar with baker's percentages? It's an easy way to keep track of how much of what you're using. Everything is measured in relationship to the flour. Flour, no matter what the amount, is 100%. Let's say I had 200 grams of flour. And I had 200 grams of water, and 100 grams of sugar. Flour would be 100%. Water would be 100%, since it's the same amount as the flour. Sugar would be 50%. Now keep in mind, the ingredients don't add up to 100%--they get their percentages relative to the flour.
So, I took a few favorite muffin recipes--Fine Cooking, Cook's Illustrated, Shirley's-and ran the numbers. I found that for the main ingredients--eggs, sugar, fat, and liquid (usually dairy) there were wide ranges for each. Shirley's recipe was on the high end of everything--very sweet, lots of fat, which made her muffin so incredibly good, however weak. Hers also had a secret ingredient that she loves, and I have begun experimenting with as well. Whipped cream! For part of her liquids, she whips cream to soft peaks, and folds it in last. This gives the baked good incredible texture and flavor, and a wonderful richness. You should try it, it's really amazing.
I kept the whipped cream in my muffin. And as much as I wanted to use pears, I had to wait for mine to ripen. That's one other thing I was going to do differently. Her recipe calls for canned, but even in the muffin I could taste the canned flavor, so I wanted to use freshly poached pears instead. Which, by the way, I'll be trying later on with some apple muffins. Pre-cooking the fruit sounds like a great way to avoid soggy middles.
I used blueberries this time. Oh, good lord. Even with the reduced amount of fat and sugar, they were so soft and tender, so moist and perfectly sweet. I now have a favorite muffin recipe, suitable for just about any add-in.
And just to show you I really did test this out and am very happy with it, I made a second batch later that evening with an extra 50 grams of flour, just to see if I could get a slightly better rise with the added protein. (Yes, the reason my cupcakes never rise too high is because they are so tender and rich--very low protein doesn't allow for a huge rise.) I don't think the extra helped, and the muffin didn't have the same gorgeous, moist crumb--so I'll be sticking with the first recipe. I will also be filling my muffin tins a bit higher--almost to the brim-- to get those beautiful rounded crowns. This recipe will fill a standard 12-cup muffin tin perfectly, so don't be afraid to pile the batter in!
Blueberry Cream Muffins
by Anna at Mediocre Chocolate
Dry:
250g ( 1 3/4 cups) bleached all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp lemon zest*
Wet:
200g (1 cup) granulated sugar
70 g (1/3 cup) oil
2 eggs (100g)
160g (2/3 cup) plain yogurt or buttermilk**
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 1/2 cups ( 150g) frozen wild blueberries, rinsed*
Preheat oven to 400. Line 12 cup muffin pan with liners, if desired, or spray and flour. In a large bowl, combine all dry ingredients, and whisk for 30 seconds to combine well.
In a medium bowl, stir together wet ingredients.
Make a well in the dry bowl, then add wet mix. Stir gently to combine.
Whip cream to soft peaks in medium bowl. Add 1/4 of cream to batter to lighten, then fold in remaining cream carefully along with blueberries.*
Portion into muffin cups, using all batter to fill all cups.
Bake 19-22 minutes, until light golden brown and toothpick inserted comes out clean. Cool in pan 5 minutes, then remove to a rack to cool completely.
*You can add just about anything you like to these--toasted nuts, different fruits, spices instead of zest, chocolate chips. Sky's the limit.
**If I am stirring in berries or another chunky ingredient, I like to use yogurt instead of buttermilk. It makes the batter slightly thicker, which suspends the chunks better. It's a myth that coating the chunks of fruit or chocolate in flour will help--it's all about the batter. If you only have one or the other, either will work, but that's why I choose yogurt usually.
Try these!! They are really amazing. When my pears ripen and we've eaten the chocolate chip ones, I'll be trying the pear and roasted walnut combo again, so I'll update with a few pics of those, and the recipe.
I've done some ricotta muffins, some morning glory, some donut muffins and apple, and cornbread has always been a favorite. I've experimented with different recipes and methods and really hadn't quite settled on what I liked the best, as far as big, full-fat bakery muffins go. I had a recipe I really liked a lot this one from Fine Cooking, but it wasn't truly spectacular.
Well, the other day I tried out Shirley Corriher's Pear and Walnut Muffin recipe from Cookwise. (I've been working my way through that one. Like, I seriously take it to bed with me, it's dog- eared and I have tons of notes. It's my new bible.) Her recipe was remarkably different from anything I'd tried, and she uses her "secret ingredient"--whipped cream-- to really make them amazing.
Sadly, they didn't meet expectations, but it was completely user error. I didn't have bleached flour, which the recipe called for, and surprisingly that can make quite a bit of difference in a baked good. This muffin truly was so tender and moist (as she warned) that it was barely a cohesive mass! I ended up picking the roasted walnuts out of the pile of crumbs the muffins became. She said to stir vigorously--I guess she meant it! Also, I think that sometimes it's a matter of preference. Shirley is Southern, and I've heard that Southerners like their cakes moist and super-sweet, almost to the point of soggy. Much like Paula's too-tender Red Velvet recipe.
But I wanted to take the recipe she'd given--because as loose and soft as they were, they were totally delicious--and make it just a bit more stable. The two elements of a baked good that give it strength are eggs and flour, which provide protein. The elements that weaken and tenderize are the fats and sugars (and to some extent the liquids as well.) So I reduced the sugars a bit, and the fat just a little, replacing it with more yogurt.
I want to talk for just a minute about how to tinker with a muffin recipe. It's not the same formulas you can do with a cake, since what you want in a muffin is a bit different. I decided to treat it more like a bread dough, as it's considered a "quick" bread anyway. Are you familiar with baker's percentages? It's an easy way to keep track of how much of what you're using. Everything is measured in relationship to the flour. Flour, no matter what the amount, is 100%. Let's say I had 200 grams of flour. And I had 200 grams of water, and 100 grams of sugar. Flour would be 100%. Water would be 100%, since it's the same amount as the flour. Sugar would be 50%. Now keep in mind, the ingredients don't add up to 100%--they get their percentages relative to the flour.
So, I took a few favorite muffin recipes--Fine Cooking, Cook's Illustrated, Shirley's-and ran the numbers. I found that for the main ingredients--eggs, sugar, fat, and liquid (usually dairy) there were wide ranges for each. Shirley's recipe was on the high end of everything--very sweet, lots of fat, which made her muffin so incredibly good, however weak. Hers also had a secret ingredient that she loves, and I have begun experimenting with as well. Whipped cream! For part of her liquids, she whips cream to soft peaks, and folds it in last. This gives the baked good incredible texture and flavor, and a wonderful richness. You should try it, it's really amazing.
I kept the whipped cream in my muffin. And as much as I wanted to use pears, I had to wait for mine to ripen. That's one other thing I was going to do differently. Her recipe calls for canned, but even in the muffin I could taste the canned flavor, so I wanted to use freshly poached pears instead. Which, by the way, I'll be trying later on with some apple muffins. Pre-cooking the fruit sounds like a great way to avoid soggy middles.
I used blueberries this time. Oh, good lord. Even with the reduced amount of fat and sugar, they were so soft and tender, so moist and perfectly sweet. I now have a favorite muffin recipe, suitable for just about any add-in.
And just to show you I really did test this out and am very happy with it, I made a second batch later that evening with an extra 50 grams of flour, just to see if I could get a slightly better rise with the added protein. (Yes, the reason my cupcakes never rise too high is because they are so tender and rich--very low protein doesn't allow for a huge rise.) I don't think the extra helped, and the muffin didn't have the same gorgeous, moist crumb--so I'll be sticking with the first recipe. I will also be filling my muffin tins a bit higher--almost to the brim-- to get those beautiful rounded crowns. This recipe will fill a standard 12-cup muffin tin perfectly, so don't be afraid to pile the batter in!
Blueberry Cream Muffins
by Anna at Mediocre Chocolate
Dry:
250g ( 1 3/4 cups) bleached all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp lemon zest*
Wet:
200g (1 cup) granulated sugar
70 g (1/3 cup) oil
2 eggs (100g)
160g (2/3 cup) plain yogurt or buttermilk**
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 1/2 cups ( 150g) frozen wild blueberries, rinsed*
Preheat oven to 400. Line 12 cup muffin pan with liners, if desired, or spray and flour. In a large bowl, combine all dry ingredients, and whisk for 30 seconds to combine well.
In a medium bowl, stir together wet ingredients.
Make a well in the dry bowl, then add wet mix. Stir gently to combine.
Whip cream to soft peaks in medium bowl. Add 1/4 of cream to batter to lighten, then fold in remaining cream carefully along with blueberries.*
Portion into muffin cups, using all batter to fill all cups.
Bake 19-22 minutes, until light golden brown and toothpick inserted comes out clean. Cool in pan 5 minutes, then remove to a rack to cool completely.
*You can add just about anything you like to these--toasted nuts, different fruits, spices instead of zest, chocolate chips. Sky's the limit.
**If I am stirring in berries or another chunky ingredient, I like to use yogurt instead of buttermilk. It makes the batter slightly thicker, which suspends the chunks better. It's a myth that coating the chunks of fruit or chocolate in flour will help--it's all about the batter. If you only have one or the other, either will work, but that's why I choose yogurt usually.
Try these!! They are really amazing. When my pears ripen and we've eaten the chocolate chip ones, I'll be trying the pear and roasted walnut combo again, so I'll update with a few pics of those, and the recipe.
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