Adjustments - Second Corn Muffin

Sometimes you just need to repeat a recipe for the comfort, and perhaps an improvement.  As spring break winds to a close (so quickly?  Where did it go?!), I'm baking and freezing like a fiend, trying to stuff the freezer with edible goodies before projects, midterms and (!) final exams sweep away all my time.  Sadly, I found that corn muffins do not, in fact, taste good frozen, but they are definitely tasty defrosted.  As I promised, the first of two recipes to use up that homemade yogurt you made :)

Although I have already posted one corn muffin recipe, I am about to post a twist on the old one.  I must confess, this is the only corn bread recipe I have used for the past 3 years.  Its combination of edibility and use of exactly one cup of milk (milk at the school is sold in half-pints or quarts, all overpriced of course) made it a favorite.  However, I have never been entirely fond of the way it dried out, or how much butter and sugar it used.  Recently, though, I have learned to make homemade yogurt, and been experimenting with swapping it for milk and in most of what I bake.  The quick recipe that follows is really just a little tweak on the original recipe, but I think it is worth posting again.

These corn muffins are soft and moist on the inside, provided you don't overbake them (I mistake I often made), with a crisp edge fresh out of the oven.  Even though it softens that nice crisp edge, the best way to store these is in a closed box or bag.  Freeze them tightly wrapped in a plastic bag or two.  Defrost either at room temperature in the closed bag, or very briefly unwrapped in the microwave.  This works quite well for my homemade breads, too.

The bullseye of my snacks.
Sorry, couldn't resist :)

Corn Muffins barely adapted from Allrecipes.com

Makes 12 muffins, or interestingly, 1 short 9" x 5" loaf

Ingredients

¼ cup olive oil (vegetable oil works, too)

¼ cup (½ stick) butter, melted

⅓ cup sugar (I prefer brown sugar, but it's up to you)

2 large eggs

1 cup plain yogurt 

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 cup cornmeal

1 cup all-purpose flour (I favor white whole wheat)

½ teaspoon salt

Equipment

1 large mixing bowl

1 rubber spatula

2-cup liquid measuring cup

½ teaspoon measure

⅓ cup dry measure

1 cup dry measure

1 12-dimple muffin tin

Butter for the muffin tin

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F.  Butter the muffin tin.

2. In the large bowl, stir together the oil, melted butter, sugar and eggs.  In the liquid measuring cup, mix the yogurt and baking soda (measure the yogurt, toss in the baking soda).  Add the yogurt to the oil mixture and combine thoroughly.  

3. Toss in the cornmeal, flour and salt.  Gently fold in until there are no streaks of cornmeal or flour left.  Fill all 12 cups of the muffin tin, approximately ⅔ of the way up.  Bake at 375°F for about 15-20 minutes, depending on your oven.  Allow to cool for a few minutes, then enjoy!  

Good Morning to You - Coconut Banana Muffins

Last week was a long week, full of ups, downs and in between.  This week?  A biofluids exam coming up, homework due a week earlier than usual, a meeting with a professor about robotics and of course, the never-ending stack of articles to be read for research.  Luckily, these muffins may just fortify me enough to scrape the remains of myself off the floor and press on.

I made these the Thursday morning that I suddenly had free.  That was one of the better times of the week. I've been trying to procrastinate less and condense my workload to reduce exhaustion, similar to sprinting, then resting fully, then sprinting again.  As a former cross-country runner, I usually find a long, steady run to be easier, but it seems that my mind is sharpest in bursts.  Since I am attempting to radically overhaul my working schedule, I'll let you know how it goes.  Hopefully, if it goes well, I'll be able to show you the homemade poptarts from a couple of weeks ago next Saturday :)

From Deb of Smitten Kitchen comes these incredible muffins.  Soft and moist inside, topped with toasted, lightly caramelized coconut shreds and hinting at the flavor of banana, they brighten up your day.  Deb actually suggested banana as a good flavor variation on the original coconut muffins, but apparently I didn’t read her entire post carefully.  She was right :)

Neatly lined up, by the dozen.

Coconut Banana Muffins adapted from Smitten Kitchen
Makes about 12 muffins

Ingredients
1 cup white whole wheat flour*
¼ cup all-purpose flour
1½ teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
¾ cup + ¼ cup (1 cup total) sweetened shredded coconut
1 banana, mashed**
1 large egg
½ cup sweetened cream of coconut***
2 tablespoons vegetable oil (coconut if you can get it)

Equipment
1 large mixing bowl
1 rubber spatula
1 whisk (optional, for mixing dry ingredients)
¼ teaspoon measure
½ teaspoon measure
¼ cup dry measure
1 cup dry measure
2-cup liquid measure
12-cup cupcake baking tin
12 paper liners/parchment squares/butter or oil for greasing

Directions
 
1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.  Line a cupcake tin with cupcake liners, parchment paper, or simply grease with butter or oil.
 
2. In the large bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder and salt.  Toss in the shredded coconut and mix until thoroughly combined.
 
3. In the measuring cup, beat the egg.  Add the banana, cream of coconut and vegetable oil.  Note that the beaten egg will be around ¼ liquid cup, and you can just add the rest of the liquids from there. 
 
4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and gently fold until there are no streaks of flour left in the bowl.
 
5. Divide the batter into 12 muffins, filling each cupcake dimple a little more than ¾ of the way full.  Bake at 350°F for about 20 minutes, or a toothpick stuck into the middle muffin comes out clean.  Allow to cool for 5 minutes, then enjoy!

Pick me, pick me!  I'm delicious!

Notes

* Deb’s recipe called for ¾ cup whole wheat flour and ½ cup all-purpose.  I suspect that a mixture of just about any proportion whole wheat to all-purpose would work here, as long as the total is 1¼ cups, but I like the slight texture that comes with whole wheat flour.  Besides, Trader Joe's (and other places) sell a lovely white whole wheat flour that tastes and bakes up a little lighter, but still offers some of the structure and flavor of whole wheat flour.  Be aware that a completely whole wheat muffin will be rather denser than one made with only all-purpose flour.

** My banana was overripe and leftover from banana muffins.  I froze it for a while, then thawed it in a bowl in the refrigerator.  Warning!  Frozen bananas can leak quite a bit when thawed.  They essentially become mushy bags of sweet banana puree, which is perfect for baking, but perhaps less so for a snack.  Also, not a lot of fun to clean out of your roommate's fridge.

*** Substitute coconut milk or coconut cream with ⅓ cup sugar if you don't have it.  Originally, Deb's recipe called for 1 cup greek yogurt and ⅓ cup sugar, which I substituted with the cream of coconut and the banana.  Fun fact: a medium banana, when mashed, equals about a half liquid cup.

The One - Banana Muffins

With bioelectricity homework due tomorrow, I'm starting to flip out a touch.  I barely understand circuits, have not yet managed a single class without falling asleep (the late afternoon time slot doesn't help) and worry about my other classes while concentrating hard to understand the professor.  In addition, there is an analysis due Wednesday that requires software only available in the biomedical engineering lab, which closes at 5:00pm, and I have classes just about all day tomorrow.  Not to mention that biofluids homework is due soon, and I spent all today working on research and robotics....  

Let me take a break.  I'd rather briefly dream about the banana muffins I made, last night.  I made these for breakfast and snacks this week, and I must say, they're quite worth a dream or two.

This is it.  I've found it.  I've been looking for it since the very beginning, and I finally have it.  My one, the banana muffin.  Not the banana loaf, since it doesn't quite have the crusty top I'm still looking for, but this is the muffin.  Soft throughout, not too greasy, full of banana flavor (that my bananas were generously brown-speckled didn't hurt, either) and improved with time.  I've tried this recipe before, but I used softened rather than melted butter.  This time, I went back to the original recipe at Simply Recipes, having once again found it from 17 and Baking.  These banana muffins are beautiful and simple, and there is nothing more to say.

Banana Muffins slightly tweaked from Simply Recipes

Makes about 12 muffins

Ingredients

3 ripe bananas

⅓ cup butter, melted

¾ cup brown sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 teaspoons cinnamon

¼ teaspoon salt

1½ cups all-purpose flour

Equipment

1 large mixing bowl

1 fork for mashing bananas (optional)

1 rubber spatula

¼ teaspoon measure

1 teaspoon measure

½ cup measure

12 cupcake liners or butter and flour for your pan

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.  Butter the cupcake pan.  I actually buttered and floured my pans, which worked great.  However, it was messy and wasted a fair amount of time and flour, and depending on how much time I had, I would really just butter.

2. Mash the bananas* and mix them with the melted butter.  Add the sugar, egg, baking soda, vanilla, cinnamon and salt and mix until thoroughly combined.

3. Add the flour and gently fold just until there are no streaks of flour left.

4. Fill each cupcake cup almost all the way up and bake at 350°F for about 20 minutes.  Allow to cool for about 5 minutes, then cool them completely on a wire rack.  Enjoy! 

Note:  I microwaved the butter to melt it first, then used a fork to mash the bananas.

Restart - Corn Muffins

So, I just found out that the oven has no window.  How will this ever satisfy an eternally curious soul like mine?  My mum calls the pup bat gua, which in Cantonese means "curious about things that have nothing to do with you."  I wonder if I'm the same, although I have a rather more vested interest in whether my muffins are burning than the pup's interest in my latest cake.

It's been a while since I last posted, due mostly to the onset of stress.  During the winter I meant to bake and blog a great deal more than I did, but applying to scholarships and internships, working, trying to study for next semester's classes and wanting to see my friends got in the way.  I even considered pausing this blog for a while, growing more and more despondent over my food situation.  In the fall of 2011, I lived in a dormitory room with a kitchen for 200 people and a mandatory, expensive meal plan, trying to avoid the greasy, overcooked and under-seasoned mess that passes for campus food.  

A pleasant eggy aroma filled the air as I pulled them out of the window-less oven.

This semester, however, fortune brought me a room in a lovely apartment on campus, the ability to shop and cook for myself, and a nice view of the parking lot.  Last Wednesday, I finally found the opportunity to purchase groceries and sat down at the table to crunch into an apple.  Three months past apple season, it was still pure bliss.  Honey-sweet at the first bite, slightly tangy closer to the core, the juice burst from the apple onto my tongue.  No apple on campus even compares.  Besides, the apple cost almost half of what the pale, tired, overpriced apples on campus would have.  

With groceries and a kitchen at my disposal, it's far past time to bake.  I've cooked for breakfast, lunch and dinner, only splurging on a date with my boyfriend last night (our first real date in 5 weeks!).  Macaroni and cheese from Pioneer Woman (halving the recipe, and still making enough for 5 people!), brown rice and sauted mushrooms, roasted broccoli with some guidance from Alton Brown, simply oatmeal on the stove (oops, too much water, made 6 cups...).  There are leftovers enough to feed me for the next four days, and I love it.

So, of course, this morning I felt like cold cereal and milk.  Okay.  But see, I made up for it!  I made corn muffins!  I've made this recipe before, but usually in my 9" round cake pan where it is supposed to go.  I don't have any square pans, just a 9" x 13" and a 12-cup muffin pan, so muffins it was.  Also because I'd rather have 12 small, portable edible items than 1 large one that scatters crumbs everywhere, plus you still have to wash the thing.  Cupcake wrappers it is :) 

I found the recipe on AllRecipes, the top-rated item if you search "cornbread."  I'm fond of it since it's very simple, and easily adapts.  In my case, I haven't gotten around to buying butter (gasp!), but I do have vegetable oil for cooking.  I also reduced the sugar, and the result is a sturdy little chunk of sunny, corny sustenance, crisp on top and somewhat soft on the inside.  They would be softer with less cornmeal and more flour, I think, but that's part of their charm.  My one note would be that they get rather dry after the first day.  I'm still trying to fix this.  Oh, look, my suitemate just grabbed one as she went out the door, and will be the first tester of the bunch.  My friend is picking me up at 2pm to get more groceries for the week, and will be my second.  Ah, I enjoy having varied tasters again who are not related to me...

A compact little bit of sunshine in my day.

Corn Muffins adapted from AllRecipes.com

Makes 12 muffins, or 1 8" square pan

Ingredients

½ cup vegetable oil (canola if you have it, or melted butter)

½ cup sugar

2 eggs

1 cup buttermilk (substitute with 1 tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar and regular milk)

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 cup cornmeal

1 cup all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon salt

Equipment

1 large (medium works) mixing bowl

1 rubber spatula

½ teaspoon measure

½ cup dry measure 

1 cup dry measure (optional, 2 halves make a whole, obviously, you roll your eyes at me)

2-cup liquid measure

1 12-cup cupcake pan 

12 cupcake liners (optional, but I was lazy and didn't want to scrub another pan) 

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F.  Line the cupcake tin with liners, or grease. 

2. In the large/medium bowl, mix the oil and sugar.  If using lemon juice or vinegar to make buttermilk, mix it in the measuring cup now.  Add the eggs to the oil and sugar and mix until thoroughly combined. 

3.  Mix the baking soda into the buttermilk, then stir it into the eggs mixture.  Add the cornmeal, flour and salt, then stir until there are only a few lumps remaining.  Fill each cupcake tin cup almost all the way up.  You should have 12 muffins.

4. Bake at 375°F for about 20 minutes.  Let cool 5 minutes, then turn out onto wire rack.  They stick to the wrappers if eaten right away, but it's rather worth it.  Enjoy!

Sturdy and filling, a perfect afternoon snack.  Or a mid-morning one :)

 

The Quest - Attempt at Fluffy Banana Muffins

I'm always in a rush, running back and forth from tasks, doing my best not to be distracted and worrying about what I should do next.  I constantly struggle for efficiency and productivity, wondering what I should do first, next, after that.  I only hope I finish the last task.  Life sometimes seems nothing more than a series of tasks, waiting for your attention.  I had hoped that I would rush less this semester, to take the time to fully understand my homework and studies, take the time to lavish care on my baking.  

For the last 3 batches I have timed my efforts, rushing the mixing and baking, with subpar results 2 out of 3 times.  You'd think I'd learn.  These muffins were mixed watching the clock anxiously, baked as I hurried to wash up and get my little butt mostly out the door, then sprinted from the oven to my room as I ran to Thermo.  On the way I managed to share a few, which, I later found out, got rave reviews.  My only criticism is that because I beat the butter into flakes rather than melting it, there was too much and butter coated the bottoms of my cupcake pan.  Luckily for me, I later decided to make corn muffins in these pre-buttered cups, but that is another post for another day. 

And now, as I am soon to be running out the door to the anticipated tedious and arduous USG Leadership Conference, I leave you with this: a light, fluffy muffin topped with oats, strongly banana flavored and just sweet enough to be an indulgent, yet quick breakfast that leans vaguely towards "healthy."  Enjoy.

Shining in the morning light.

Fluffy Banana Muffins adapted from 17 and Baking

Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients

3 overripe bananas (Mine nearly fell off the hanger, that was fun)

¼ cup unsalted butter, softened (It's warm and humid since the last vestiges of 
New York summer are passing by, so it only took a few minutes)

½ cup brown sugar, firmly packed into the measuring cup

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon baking soda

Pinch salt (I used one of those little packets you get free in a food court)

1½ cups all-purpose flour

Oats for sprinkling on top

Equipment

1 large mixing bowl

1 wooden spoon

1 plastic butter knife swiped from the food court on campus to cut the butter stick in half

½ cup dry measure

1 teaspoon measure

1 cupcake pan (Makes 12)

12 cupcake papers

Directions

1. Mash the bananas in the large mixing bowl.  Try to get it liquid for lighter muffins, leave some small chunks if you like denser muffins.  

2. Add the butter and (gently!) whack it with the wooden spoon until you have tiny flakes of butter floating in a mass of pourable banana.  Add the sugar and mix until combined.  Add the egg and beat until completely combined.

You can see the nice flakes of butter floating in banana mush here, along with a single, lovely egg.

3. Add the baking soda, then the vanilla extract (so the vanilla doesn't wet the spoon and make difficulties when you try to scoop out the soda - see, I am efficient sometimes!).  Add the salt and mix until completely combined.

4. Pour in the flour and gently fold until there are no streaks.  You can mix a few extra times to make sure; the banana helps to keep everything moist.

5. Pack the cupcake pan, liners and oven mitts in a backpack.  Carry the bowl of batter with the wooden spoon.  Carefully make your way down 2 flights of stairs and preheat the oven to 350°F.  While the oven is preheating, line the cupcake pan, then fill each cup about ¾ full.  Sprinkle the tops with oats; any type works.  Bake the cupcakes for about 25 minutes, until puffed up and the top is slightly browned.  The muffins will puff up spectacularly in the oven, then fall slightly as they cool.  They're heavenly eaten fresh from the oven, even when you're running late to Thermodynamics.  Hey, it's radiation cooking the muffins, right?  I was studying!

Worth having to walk into class late.