Muffin-Love

On Sunday, John and I celebrated our one-fourth anniversary. (It does bug me a little to hear expressions like "three-month anniversary" since the word's roots are "year" and "turn." It only makes sense if the context uses years. But that's a post for another day. :-)) We celebrated with lemon meringue pie, which I haven't made in married life until now! One thing I've had to humbly realize in my few months of adventurous housewifery is how much I still have to learn about cooking and baking. I thought I had a pretty good handle on it, but then I've never had the privilege of cooking at this volume before!

I am confident with muffins. I love muffins! John loves blueberry muffins and chocolate muffins, but I love muffins in general, and since we were having our first overnight company last week (two batches back to back!), it seemed like a perfect opportunity to make some.

Our second batch of company was coming on Friday night, so I baked these on Friday for Saturday morning. Unfortunately, the only one left I have promised to John, but I thought I'd share the recipe and tips I've learned anyway.

This "Sweet Muffins" recipe I used throughout college, and it comes from the Fortsville United Methodist Cookbook. Mom has this book, and my Aunt Sue thrilled me by giving me a copy at our Smith-family bridal shower!


"Sweet Muffins

1 egg
1/2 c. milk
1/4 c. salad oil
1 1/2 c. flour
1/2 c. sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Grease muffin pans. Beat egg; stir in milk and oil. Mix in remaining ingredients just until flour is moistened; batter should be lumpy. Fill muffin cups 2/3 full. Bake 20 to 25 minutes, until golden brown; sprinkle with sugar."



That's the recipe word-for-word, barring any typos, but here is what my great aunt taught my mom who taught me to do differently.

First of all, when possible, the wet ingredients should all be room temperature. I usually measure the milk into a liquid measuring cup and set it and the egg out on the counter a couple of hours ahead of time, when possible. I find that 375 is sufficiently hot for the oven. I think Mom only uses 350, but my muffins come out wonderfully golden at 375 for 20 minutes. Pam makes greasing muffins pans a breeze, though of course papers are ok, too. When it's time to start the wet ingredients, I measure the oil and crack the egg right into the measuring cup with the milk and beat them all with a fork. I combine all the dry ingredients in a separate bowl. These muffins had apples and pecans (which were on sale, yay!) in them, but I use the same recipe with blueberries, banana, etc. Banana I would whisk into the wet ingredients, but pretty much everything else I stir into the dry at this point in the recipe, then dump the wet into the dry and truly stir only a little bit. Sometimes there are even still lumps of flour in places when I'm scooping the batter into the muffin cups, but it still comes out wonderful! Oh, and it's ok to fill the the muffin cups all the way! That's how we get our beautiful (imho) cobbly muffin tops. It does, however, mean that instead of getting a dozen muffins per batch I only get 6 or 7, depending on how much extra fruit I've added. Since these were company muffins, I also added a cinnamon/sugar/flour/butter streusel topping that I read about in my Southern Living cookbook.

Verdict? They were good. :-) And now, courtesy of Proverbs 16:18, my next batch will probably fall.