CSA Week #8

The chapter in which we break Ed with zucchini.

Over the years we've lived and cooked together, Ed and I have greatly expanded each other's palettes. I would say my greatest success was in getting Ed to try zucchini, cooked in various ways other than just "unidentifiable overcooked tasteless green mush." Turns out it can be good. In the last few weeks, we've had it shredded and fried in patties, breaded and baked into coins, sliced into zoodles, chunked and fried as a side dish, and cooked into veggies stews. I would even argue that zucchini has been delicious in all the various forms that we've eaten it, and Ed has gone from tolerating the vegetable (technically a fruit) to actually enjoying it.

But by Tuesday night, we had chomped our way through the week's CSA and were down to a zucchini and a jar of pesto. I was all excited about a pasta dish with zucchini rounds and a pesto sauce, and Ed simply couldn't do it. He couldn't eat a single bite more of zucchini. I'll give it to him, he tried. And failed.

It's ok, he didn't go hungry, since there are other things to eat in this world. And I do think the zucchini problem was compounded by our landlords dropping off a couple huge monsters at our door that they'd grown in the garden. The bonus zucchinis were pretty hard to use up.

Anyway, we're on to a new week, with a new batch of zucchs, and I choose the little ones, because those are tasty, and will happily eat them all, chunked and fried, for lunches, if Ed doesn't want any for dinner.

Week #8

8 ears of corn
1 bunch collards
1 bunch kale
1 purple cabbage
1 bunch cilantro
2.5lb tomatoes
2.5lb cucumbers
1.5lb zucchinis
1.5lb carrots
1.5lb beets

We're moving up the glycemic index now! Look at those gorgeous little candy beets and sweet carrots! I'm pretty excited about this one, all sorts of my favorite things. There were two types of cucumbers, the ones with the thin skin (my preference), and the ones with the thicker skin and more warts, good for pickling. I mostly got the thin-skinned variety, because I think those taste better raw.

First up was a super quick dinner salad for Thursday night. Ed was off to VT, to meet up with John to go on an adventure, but first needed to do some last-minute truck maintenance so that it would work better, so as he did that I made a quick batch of corny corn muffins, and a salad of chopped cucumbers, tomatoes, parsley, sliced raw beets, sliced red onion, chickpeas, lemon, salt, and olive oil. Tasty stuff, and it was all done just as Ed came back in, so he could wolf down a quick dinner before leaving.




The corny corn muffins were very corny, because I may have double the amount of corn called for in the recipe, and used two ears and half the recipe. I used the recipe from Bon Appetit, with the only changes being that I left out the sugar, replaced milk with water (because we had no milk), and left out the bonus egg yolk. While the recipe tasted fine, it was a pain in the butt to make, with weird random quantities and things like "one egg yolk," which would leave you with one egg white. I'll stick with the KAF basic muffin recipe, or the cornbread recipe on the back of the package, and just add fresh corn kernels, next time.

Other dishes - Toast with a salsa of cherry tomatoes, husk cherries, fresh young raw purple onions, chives and lime juice. Served over some shredded mackerel mixed with lemon and parsley, on top of a sourdough toast. And, because I'd thought we'd need more food, but we didn't, a side of lentils, cooked with lots of chicken stock, an onion, garlic, some tomato paste, and some mexican chili paste, which adds amazing flavor. That chili paste has vanilla, coffee, and like fifteen kinds of peppers. Gift from our friend Neil when he was in Mexico - he came home with the stuff and told us "I don't know what to do with this, but I bet you do, here you go!"



The salsa was really good. Again, those young red onions are amazing. Now they're all gone. The husk cherries also worked really well in the salsa, a hit of sweet and sour amongst the tomatoes.


And because there's no use making pickles if you aren't going to eat them, a couple refrigerator dill pickles to go along. And a watermelon gin & tonic, because it was that sort of Wednesday.

The pesto zucchini pasta dish. Quite delicious, actually. The trick here is to reserve some of the starchy pasta water, to thin out the pesto.

Our flowers from last weekend and even the week before are still going strong. So pretty!

Pesto biscuits

I'm getting a bit back-logged here, I have oodles of new things that we cooked!  This is from last week, or is it the week before?  whenever it was that the temperatures were finally down in the 50s at night and only in the 70s during the day, so I actually was willing to turn on the oven.  We were severely short on anything bready or starchy, so to satisfy some imminent hunger cravings I made Alton Brown's pesto biscuits, from the I'm just here for more food cookbook.  They were pretty delicious, and quick to throw together.  And since I happen to have pesto in the freezer, it seemed like a good use for it!

I like to make drop biscuits, because then you don't have to knead them and cut them out and whatever, just makes it faster.  But, they aren't the prettiest things to look at.  I made some very minor tweaks to the recipe, using all butter instead of butter + lard (didn't have any lard), using half whole wheat flour, and like half the amount of buttermilk than called for, since I ran out halfway through measuring it.  Still worked out, and they were delicious!

Pesto dinner biscuits
Made 9

1/2C white flour
1/2C whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/8tsp baking soda
1/2tsp salt
2 tbs butter, frozen
1/2C buttermilk (if you run out, just add water until you have the right amount)
1/4C pesto

Preheat oven to 450F.  Grease a baking sheet.

Mix all the dry stuff together.  Use cheese grater to grate frozen butter into dry stuff.  Pinch with your fingertips for 30 seconds or so.  mix all the wet stuff together.  Add wet to dry, mix just to combine.  Plop spoonfuls of batter onto the baking sheet, in whatever size you feel like eating.

Bake for 15-20min, until golden brown and delicious.  Enjoy!

Bacon Cheddar Chive Biscuits

I made these, and they were scrumptious. I added about two tablespoons of chopped chives. Other than that, I actually followed a recipe! The biscuits were tender and flaky, flavored like bacon and cheese, crunchy on the outside, and pure deliciousness. I had one for breakfast the next day (not sure how any of them survived from dinner, but somehow, there was one leftover), and it was still tender and flaky, though less crispy on the outside. These DEFINITELY got a good Ed-rating. But then again, it's hard to go wrong with good, thick-cut, smoky bacon from Carl's sausage kitchen.



I've reprinted the recipe below, in my words and for my files. But for the true foodie effect, I recommend heading over to pioneer woman and following her recipe. Actually, now that I look at this, I did change some things. Using all butter instead of crisco, and adding 1/4tsp of salt. Oops.

Bacon Cheddar Chive Biscuits
2C flour
1tsp baking powder
1tsp kosher salt
4 tbs frozen butter
1/4C olive oil
10tbs milk
1 egg
1C grated cheese
6 pieces bacon
3tbs chopped chives
1C diced onion

First, deal with the bacon: lay the strips out on a cooling rack, placed over a baking sheet, and bake for 10-20 minutes at 350F, until it is nicely browned and most of the fat has rendered out. Use some of that fat to sweat the onion, with a pinch of salt to help it along. Once the bacon has cooled, crumble it. Bump the oven to 400F.

Mix all the dry goods together. Using the big holes on a cheese grater, grate the frozen butter into the dry stuff. Mix that around with your finger tips (pinch it) for about a minute, then let it be. Stir in the cheese, crumbled bacon, chives, and onion. Mix all the wet ingredients in a separate bowl. Dump the wet ingredients into the dry. Stir just until combined - no more. Plop biscuit-sized rounds of dough onto a greased baking sheet, and bake for 20 minutes.

Enjoy!

Popovers

Ed has been hunting for the perfect popover recipe, and I am hardly complaining. It's rough, having to consume a batch of popovers every few days. Anyway, I think he may have stumbled onto the winning recipe. The trick seems to be that you have to fill the tins pretty full, so that there is enough batter to let them really pop.




The recipe, if I can remember it, is as follows:
1C flour
2 large eggs
1C milk
1 tbs melted butter
salt?

Preheat the oven to 425, and put a liberally-greased muffin tin in there to warm up.

You beat together the eggs and milk, add in the butter, beat it some more, then beat in the flour. There must have been some salt, call it 1/4 teaspoon. Take the muffin tin out of the oven, and pour in the batter, filling the cups to almost full. I think this filled 10 of 12 cups. Bake at 425 for 15 minutes, without opening the oven. Lower the heat to 375, and bake another 10 minutes, then you can peek. If they're starting to be too brown, call them done, if they're still yellow, let them keep cooking another 5 minutes.

Turn off the oven, take out the popovers, pop the side with a fork or a knife, and return them to the oven for 5 minutes. Apparently this helps them keep their pop.

Then do your best not to eat the entire batch all at once. They're pretty tasty.

Raspberry chocolate oatmeal muffins

I wanted to make muffins, and I was thinking of making blueberry oatmeal muffins, because I'd remembered them being awesome. However, I didn't have any blueberries, and I wanted to put chocolate into the muffins. I solved problem number one by walking down to the corner store (a much faster prospect than digging out my car and attempting to get out of the driveway), but all they had by way of frozen fruit was raspberries. For $7. Yikes. But, I haven't bought any food yet this week and it's already Wednesday, so I felt like it would be ok to splurge on frozen raspberries. It was a big bag, anyway.

I walked back home with the raspberries (and milk. I'd needed milk, too.), and looked up some recipes for raspberry oatmeal muffins, and everything kept pointing back to this person's muffin recipe. I figured if enough other people liked her recipe, I'd follow it, too. The big difference between her muffins and the kinds I usually make is that she was making a butter muffin instead of an oil muffin. I find butter to be too many extra steps, but at least this recipe was just melting it, as opposed to creaming it or some other labor-intensive process. The end result was delicious, but raspberries and chocolate are a match made in heaven, so I was sort of expecting deliciousness. Its not a very sweet muffin, but again, the raspberries and chocolate take care of that. I've posted the recipe below, but I followed the original one almost exactly. Almost. I am incapable of following a recipe as it's given to me...

Raspberry chocolate oatmeal muffins
Made 12 big muffins

1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4C sugar
1/2C (1 stick) butter, melted
1C milk
1C rolled oats (not quick oats)
1tsp lemon juice
1/2C white flour + 2 tbs white flour
1/2C whole wheat flour
1/2tsp salt
1tsp baking powder
1/2tsp baking soda
some cinnamon
1C frozen raspberries
1/2C chocolate chunks

Combine the oats and milk and lemon juice in a bowl, and let it sit. The original recipe said let it sit 1hr, I got impatient at 30min, and that was just fine. Buttermilk is an acceptable substitute for milk+lemon juice (which should be vinegar, anyway, but I didn't have any).

Preheat your oven to 375F.

Melt the butter.

Put the egg, vanilla, sugar, and butter into the bowl with the milk and the oats. Stir that around thoroughly. Dump all the dry goods (flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder) on top, and mix those around lightly so they're uniform before you fold them in to the wet stuff. Add the raspberries and chocolate, and fold that into the batter. Don't overmix things.

Put the batter into lined muffin tins, and bake for 25-30min. I think mine took just about 30min, the raspberries add a lot of moisture. The muffin tops will be golden brown, and spring back when you poke them, when they're done. Remove to a cooling rack, and enjoy!


The muffins were really crumbly, but, moist and delicious at the same time, if you can get your head around that. Mostly, they were just awesomely raspberry-y and chocolate-y, which is what I was going for.

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Muffins

I suppose these are muffins, but they certainly have enough chocolate to qualify as a cupcake. Where is the line between cupcake and muffin, anyway? These are loosely based on a chocolate applesauce cake of Anna's, but then I tweaked stuff, for no good reason other than not having the full 1-1/3C applesauce. I put in regular chocolate chips and white chocolate chips, I think nuts would have been good, too, but I wanted to be able to share these with Ali on our way to Canada, and she can't do nuts, under penalty of death. So, no nuts.



Chocolate chocolate chip muffins
Made 12 huge muffins

1C white flour
1/2C whole wheat flour
1/3C cocoa (I used the special dark variety)
1C applesauce
1/3C oil
1/3C greek yogurt
1 egg
3/4C sugar
1/2C chocolate chips
1/2C white chocolate chips
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda

Preheat oven to 350F. In a big bowl, mix the dry goods. In another bowl, mix together the wet stuff. Add wet to dry, and don't overmix. Line the muffin pan with muffin liners, or just grease each cup, and load 'em up. I found I had to fill the cups above the top, but they didn't explode or anything, they just made big muffins.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, until a testing stick comes out clean, and the top rebounds when you poke it with a finger. Don't overbake, because these guys are deliciously moist. And dark, holy cow that's a hit of chocolate.

Lunchbox muffins

Lunchbox muffins is sort of a silly name, nobody uses a lunchbox. I've used a plastic grocery bag for the last four years, maybe that counts as a lunchbox. Anyway, these are basically a redo of veggie muffins I made a long time ago. I remembered them being good, and I wanted to see what would happen when I added some greek yogurt. Basically, looking to get these have the right macronutrient ratio to eat as a meal. Although, you'll need like four at a time to get enough calories. Anyway, I came pretty close, thanks to the huge slug of protein the greek yogurt delivers. They also taste really good, but that's because you should never sacrifice taste in the name of "nutrition". The one problem was that these guys stuck to their wrappers, I probably should have greased them.

Lunchbox muffins
Made 15

1/2C white flour
1C whole wheat flour
1 tbs baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2tsp flavoring - mix of black pepper, red pepper, dried herbs, whatever you like. I used a mix of peppers.
4 eggs
1/4C oil
1C nonfat greek yogurt
1C kale (packed down)
1/2-1C beet greens
1 onion
3 cloves garlic
~1/4C dried tomatoes
~3/4C shredded cheddar cheese
~3/4C shredded pecorino cheese (or other flavorful cheese)

The types of veggies and cheese are totally optional. Its basically 2-3C of chopped veggies, and 1.5C grated cheese.

Preheat your oven to 350F. In one bowl, mix the flours, baking powder, salt, and dried flavorings.

In a large bowl, mix the eggs and greek yogurt and oil. Chop all the vegetables super finely, and add them to the wet stuff. Add the cheeses to the dry mixture, and mix around until they're coated with flour. Add the wet to the dry, and stir to combine. It'll be super dry - I decided that was a good thing, because the veggies were uncooked, so they'd give off some moisture during baking.

Line the muffin tins with muffin tin liners, and spray those with something nonstick. Load 'em up high - they don't rise much on their own, so I just filled each tin as much as I feasibly could. As you can see from my blurry pictures, the muffin stays lumpy. Don't expect it to spread out.

I thought these were delicious, very definitely cheese-y and a bit spicy. They would not have passed the Ed-test, because Ed thinks muffins should be sweet, and preferably frosted. I'm not sure he realizes the difference between a muffin and a cupcake. Maybe he would eat these now, he certainly didn't eat the last ones, and still gets indignant that I put broccoli into a cupcake. Except, its not a cupcake. Sigh.

I added up the numbers, and each muffin is 153 calories. 8.5g fat, 12g carbs, and 8.5g protein. That's 22% of the muffin's calories coming from protein, making it just about a perfect snack/mini meal. If you eat like four of them. I just need bigger muffin tins. I bet sprinkling the cheese on top would be good, too, and might look nicer than having it hidden inside. Also, bacon would be good. That might get an Ed-approval, if I had bacon in the muffins.

Not the most attractive-looking muffin I've seen, but tasty enough to make up for it.

Apple chunk muffins

Anna and I went apple picking, and after we went back into the field, having discovered that we did indeed like empire apples, we had more than enough apples to keep us applefied. Anyway, she recommended the King Arthur Flour apple muffins, and so I went and looked up the recipe and thought, yeah, those are gonna be really tasty.

And then, because I am utterly useless at actually following recipes, I didn't really follow the recipe at all. I sort of wasn't paying attention, and then when I got around to adding the wet to the dry I checked to see how well I'd been following the recipe, and it turns out I'd actually put in two eggs and regular milk instead of one egg and buttermilk, but you know, these turned out alright anyway. Funny how that works. I think I'm just not too picky when it comes to muffins.

Apple chunk muffins
Makes 16

1C white whole wheat flour
1C white flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2C brown sugar (add more if you like a sweeter muffin)
Some cinnamon
Some nutmeg
Some ground ginger, but not too much
2 tbs oil
2 eggs
1C milk
2 apples
1/2C walnuts
1/2C golden raisins
More brown sugar for sprinkling on top

Preheat the oven to 350F. Grease a muffin tin.
Mix together the flours, baking powder, salt, spices, and sugar. In a 2C measure, mix the eggs, oil, and milk. Add the wet to the dry, don't overmix it while combining. Add the apples (peeled and chopped), walnuts and raisins. Fold those in. Fill the muffin tins just about to the top. Its a chunky batter, some chunks will be higher than others. Sprinkle brown sugar on top of each muffin, and bake for 15-20 minutes, until they're golden brown and delicious.

So, not quite the King Arthur Flour version, but they're still darn good.

Banana chocolate chip muffins

This week seems to be a little about cleaning out my fridge. I found a banana that was fully brown, but, it was still firm. As in, not rotting. But there was no way I'd be taking that thing out of the fridge to eat it. So, banana bread! My justification for turning this bread into muffins this time is that I didn't want my oven on for that long, and muffins cook faster than a loaf of bread. Plus then they're just so perfect and bite-sized...

Anyway, I sort of made up the recipe, but it seems to have worked. The picture isn't really much to look at... I suppose walnuts would have been a nice addition, but I was feeling lazy. They're not very sweet muffins, due to me not having any sugar, and not wanting to use up ALL of my honey. But they are good, in a not-too-sweet sort of way.

Banana chocolate chip muffins
Made 11. You would get 10 if you fill the muffin tins more fully
2 eggs
1/4C yogurt
2 tbs oil
1 ripe banana
1/4C honey
1/4C white flour
1C white whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4tsp salt
1/2C chocolate chips

Grease a muffin tin and preheat your oven to 400F. Mash up your banana with the yogurt, eggs, honey, and oil. Dump the flour on top of this, and the baking powder and salt on top of that. Lightly mix the flour with the salt and baking powder, without mixing it into the wet stuff. Once the dry is mostly combined, fold it into the wet. This makes a pretty sticky, thick batter. You could go with more yogurt or less flour to thin things out... but it works well enough as is. Fold the chocolate chips into the batter, and spoon it into the muffin tins. Once you put the muffins in the oven turn the temperature down to 350F. bake for 15-20 minutes.

Lemon-Ginger Muffins

I've been meaning to try out Dorie Greenspan's lemon yogurt cake for a while now, and eventually I realized that unless I turned it into muffins it just wouldn't get made. The reasoning behind this is that muffins can be sort of construed as health food that I will eat while (or after) training, but cake disappears a little more slowly and with a lot more guilt. Not having an office to bring baked goods in to is going to really limit my dessert-baking. Anyway, I love the combination of lemon and ginger, and I happened to have some crystallized ginger just waiting to get used up. I also happened to have a zip lock bag with 3/4C of sugar and 1/4 tsp of salt, that I was going to use to make a quart of koolaid to drink while riding, but then I realized that that is way too much salt, and the koolaid would taste disgusting. Sort of a tangent, but I didn't want to just throw out that much sugar, so I figured I'd make a recipe for lemon ginger muffins that used 1/4 tsp of salt and 3/4C of sugar. Dorie's recipe calls for a full cup of sugar, but I figured that if I was turning the cake into muffins, I would want them to be a little less sweet and a little less rich than a cake. So, 3/4C of sugar would be perfect. I also reduced the oil, to no discernably bad effect.



Lemon Ginger Muffins
Makes 12 muffins. Inspired by Dorie Greenspan's Lemon Yogurt Cake

1C white flour
1/2C white whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3/4C sugar
3 eggs
1/4 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp lemon extract
Zest from one lemon (or more, if you like lemony things)
3/4C yogurt (I used 1%)
2 tbs oil
1" cube of fresh ginger, minced (optional)
1/2C crystalized ginger, diced

Preheat the oven to 400F. Grease a muffin tin. In a large bowl, combine the sugar and lemon zest and rub it around with your fingertips until the sugar is moist and smells deliciously lemony. I could have gone for the zest from 2-3 lemons, honestly, but it was lemony enough with just one lemon. Add the eggs, yogurt, vanilla, fresh ginger, lemon extract, and oil to the sugar, and stir until the mixture is smooth. Dump the flours, baking powder, and salt in a big pile on top of the wet stuff - gently stir together the dry stuff on top of the wet, without letting it get too wet. This is my method of not getting another bowl dirty, I do it frequently with cookie dough. If you have a dishwasher, or enjoy doing dishes, go ahead and combine the dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Fold the dry into the wet, only folding enough to barely moisten things.

Fold the crystalized ginger into the batter, divide it into muffin tins (I filled mine completely to the top, and it all worked out), and pop that sucker into the oven. Once the muffins are in the oven, turn the heat down to 350. The idea behind putting them into a hot oven is that they'll rise higher. Bake for 30 minutes, then check for doneness with a toothpick. Keep baking if they're not done.

Oh, I also sprinkled my muffins with coarse sugar, which gave the tops a nice crunch. I recommend that step.

The muffins stayed moist and delicious for four days, although they're definitely best right out of the oven. The ginger flavor was more pronounced the longer they sat out.



This recipe is a definite keeper. And a do-over-and-over-er.

Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread

I realized the other day, I've made a lot of zucchini cake, but I've never made zucchini bread. Specifically, with chocolate chips. I perused the internets for a while, and while I found a bunch of interesting looking recipes, I really wanted something pretty standard. And something that would only use 2 eggs and 1 zucchini's-worth of zucchini, since those were the limits on my proportions. I eventually settled on this one, but made some changes anyway. I'm astounded that I managed to actually make this into a loaf of quickbread and not turn it into muffins... wow.

I don't have an Ed-rating for this, because it has zucchini in it, and its a moist, dense, bready-cake-thing, which is something he's scared of. Maybe he'll taste this and like it, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

In case it isn't obvious from the picture of the whole loaf, my oven has decided that the upper burner is going to go on super-duper-high, and the lower burner didn't turn on. Or something. The bottom and sides of the bread didn't get crunchy and crispy like most things do when I cook them in bread pans, and the top has a burned image of the burner above it. I hope this doesn't mean we need a new oven...


Next time, I'm tweaking this recipe so that its muffins. I mean, this stuff is good as slices, but it would be better as a muffin.

Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread
Makes 1 9x5x3" loaf

1.5C flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4tsp baking powder
3/4C sugar
1/4tsp salt
1 tsp espresso powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 eggs
1 zucchini
1/2C applesauce
1/4C + 2 tbs oil
1/2C toasted walnuts
1/2C chocolate chips

Preheat your oven to 350F and grease a 9x5x3" pan.

In a big bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, espresso powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

In another bowl, mix the eggs, vanilla, oil, and applesauce. Add the wet stuff to the dry stuff, and mix just until everything is combined. Fold in the nuts and chocolate chips. Plop the batter into the pan and bake for an hour.

Future Changes (coming soon to a blog near you)
It tasted a little too baking-soda-ish. I'm going to add some yogurt, so that it reacts with the baking soda, and take out the applesauce. That wasn't adding anything anyway. I'll probably take out the +2tbs of oil, too, because why get a quarter cup measure dirty and then a tablespoon measure dirty too? And I'm definitely making these as muffins next time. I think they need more nuts and maybe fewer chocolate chips, as you can see below, there are a lot of chocolate chips studding this loaf. Luckily, its "dry" enough that they don't all sink to the bottom. Hence my belief that it really wants to be a muffin.

It was delicious, though. Moist, with a crunchy top. and chocolate chips inside. What more could you ask for?

Lemon Cornmeal Muffins

I bought some blue cornmeal the other day. I couldn't help myself, it was BLUE! Unfortunately, this cornmeal hasn't lived up to its awesome blueness, its actually more purple than blue, and if you cook with it, it sort of fades, and ends up just looking ... dirty. Thats exactly what I'm looking for in a baked good, dirty! Hmm.

Anyway, its also a very fine grind, which I don't like so much. I made muffins out of it, and I wanted more of a crunchy, big grain texture. I actually think I wanted polenta, I had a cake in mind when I made these muffins that I had had in London when I was last there. There is this little pastry shop around the corner from where my grandfather lives that makes the most amazing desserts, and the last time I was there I had this lemon polenta cake with pistachios that was out of this world amazing. I haven't really tried to replicate the recipe, yet, but I'd say that these muffins were polenta-cake-inspired. They were quite good, and because of the squash they stayed pretty moist, and they were healthier than eating cake for breakfast. Although I have been known to do that. I would make these again!

(sorry for the uninspired picture, the other muffins all got eaten and this muffin didn't last too long before it suffered a similar fate).

Lemon Cornmeal Squash Muffins

1 yellow summer squash
1C white whole wheat flour
1C blue corn meal
1 tbs baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2C sugar
2 eggs
1C milk
juice of 1/2 lemon
zest of 1/2 lemon
1 tsp lemon extract
1 tbs oil

Mix all the dry stuff in a big bowl. In a different bowl, mix all the wet stuff. Grate the squash using a cheese grater into the wet bowl. Add the wet stuff to the dry stuff, stir just to combine. Bake 25-35minutes at 350F, until a tester comes out clean. I found that because of the squash, the muffins took a little longer to cook all the way through, but they stayed moist for two days.

The Ed rating was a "good", even after I ascertained that he knew that they contained squash. Apparently squash is ok, but zucchini is still out. He wanted them to be more like a regular corn muffin, though, skipping the lemon flavor altogether. I disagree. Keep the lemon.

Pumpkin Cranberry Muffins

I can't leave you without a muffin recipe for too long. It is, after all, my primary source of sustenance after rollerskiing. I figured I'd go along the lines of the King Arthur Flour Mini Pumpkin Cakes, which had been a success as a cupcake, but I wanted something a little healthier and a little less fluffy and airy. Fluffy is a great quality in a cupcake, but I like something I can bite into when I eat muffins. Something that will support nuts, and fruit, and whatever else I feel like putting into it. I made two versions of these muffins, the first was with all white flour (I wanted to make it whole wheat but I forgot until it was too late), twice the nuts, and no cranberries. This was a good muffin, and I was going to just make it again, but I didn't have as many walnuts, so I added half a cup of cranberries. Random. But they're a delicious addition. I upped the sugar a little too, since cranberries are so sour, but I love how you get little sour pockets of redness inside the muffin. If you're not so into the cranberry-explosions in your mouth, skip the cranberries and just go with all nuts. Or you could add raisins or dried cranberries. Its a muffin, people, the possibilities are endless!

Having gone through two batches of these muffins by now, I have discovered - they freeze very well. It must be all that pumpkin goop in them, but they stay really moist in the freezer, and won't crumble to pieces like some low-fat muffins are wont to do. I think these have moved up to second place in the "freezer muffins" category, behind the carrot spice muffins, and they're probably in the top five of my overall "favorite muffin" category. They got a good Ed-rating, too, despite having pumpkin in them. He even knew that they were pumpkin muffins, and went back for a second one. I call that a success!

Pumpkin Cranberry-Walnut Muffins
Makes 12 muffins with pretty big tops

1C pumpkin puree
2 eggs
1/3C plain yogurt (skim is fine)
1C sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 tbs spices (cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg in this case, heavy on the ginger)
3/4C whole wheat flour
1/2C white flour
2 tbs ground flaxseed
1/2C chopped walnuts
1/2C chopped fresh or frozen cranberries*

*If you use dried cranberries or raisins, reduce the sugar to 3/4C. You could also add some crystallized ginger.

Preheat your oven to 400F. Grease a muffin tin. In a large bowl, mix the pumpkin, eggs, yogurt, sugar, baking powder, salt, spices, nuts, and fruit. Add the flours. Mix to combine, and then pour the batter into the muffin tins. Bake for 20-30 minutes, until the muffins are starting to look pretty brown on top. Since these are so moist, they're ok with baking a little longer than normal, so that they don't start to taste gummy.

If you're in the mood for a cakier muffin, you can substitute parts or all of the yogurt for oil. It will make it lighter. No guarantees as to how it will work out with the nuts and fruit, though.

Sorry the picture is not great. Some things just deserve to be eaten instead of photographed...

Summer Squash and Lemon Muffins

I make a lot of lower-fat, oil-free, whole-grain, or otherwise "healthy" muffins. Mostly, I eat them when I need a snack for before or after training, as a way to quickly get calories that I know are good for me and fall close to that 25-60-15% breakup of macronutrients that I want my overall diet to follow. Its my compromise between spending a lot of time prepping my post-workout food to eat in the car and stopping at a gas station and eating ice cream. Which is a fantastic recovery food, but maybe not for every day... Anyway, I know that muffins without oil don't freeze as well as the ones with it, and some people claim that low-fat muffins are gummy-tasting, but I've never noticed that. Particularly in my carrot-spice muffin, I find the texture to be really cake-like and moist. So I decided to do a test, with one of my favorites--the zucchini lemon muffins from the King Arthur Flour Book. (The recipe is also available online, hence the link).

I didn't have any green zucchini on hand, but I did have yellow squash, and since zucchini and squash are basically the same thing, I figured I'd use that. And I have to say, using yellow squash, you can't even tell that there is squash in the muffin when you look at it! Normally the zucchini makes things more moist anyway, without imparting any scary zucchini flavor, but now its like its hidden. Unfortunately, I told Ed that they were zucchini muffins before I thought about not telling him and seeing if he would like them, so he didn't even try one. So, after mixing the dry goods, I split them in half, and to half the batter added my "low-fat" wet goods, to the other half added the "full-fat" wet goods. In this case I replaced oil with yogurt, although I'd like to do it again trying applesauce, my other standby. Here is the recipe, in case you need things written out instead of just adjusting the King Arthur recipe:

Dry Goods:

2C flour
1C grated zucchini or yellow squash
1 tbs baking powder
1/2C sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2C walnuts
1/2C raisins (golden raisins would be perfect)
1 lemon's worth of zest (KA flour uses half a lemon, I use the whole one, because what else are you going to do with half a lemon??)

Mix together the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. Stir in the rest of the add-ins. Divide this into two equal portions (or not, you could just put everything into one bowl and forget the experiment).

Regular Wet Stuff:
1/4C milk (I used skim)
1 egg
2.5 tbs oil

Low-Fat Wet Stuff:
1/4C milk (skim)
1 egg
2.5 tbs yogurt (or you could try applesauce)

Mix together your wet stuff (independently of each other) and dump it into the dry--fold just to combine. Fill the greased muffin tins, each batter makes 6 muffins. Bake at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes, until the muffins are golden brown on top.

So: how did they compare? Visually, they looked the same, within the normal variation of 6 versus 6.

The lower fat muffin (is not no fat because of the walnuts and the egg) is on the left, the regular one is on the right. The lumpy things are either walnuts or raisins. No major differences. So I cut them in half. The immediate difference is the size of the crumb. The muffin made with oil has a much more consistent, small, cake-like crumb:

As an aside, you can see how the squash pretty much disappears into the muffin--all that is left are little yellow flakes, which could also be lemon zest.

The yogurt-muffin has stickier-looking insides, for lack of a better word. It is definitely not as pretty-looking, but also this particular muffin has lots of stuff in the middle, making the comparison a little trickier. But you can see that there are bigger holes in there than in the oil muffin:

If we were going on muffin looks alone, the oil one would be all I ever made. Luckily, taste comes into play. I took a bite of the oil muffin. Tastes good, moist, lemony, light, crunchy where there are walnuts and chewy on the raisins. As far as muffins go, this ranks pretty high up there. I took a bite of the yogurt-muffin. While hot from the oven, it tasted almost exactly the same as the oil-muffin. Lemony, light, moist. I finished up the muffins because you can't let things like that go to waste, and fresh-baked goods are some of my favorite things.

Once they'd cooled down, I tasted them again. The oil muffin is about the same as the first time, if a little drier-tasting. I imagine this is because of the close-knit crumb. The yogurt muffin tasted moister than before, but definitely not gummy. It was a little bit chewier, as opposed to the crumble of the oil one, but not overly much, in fact I liked the chewiness of the dough. But then again, I'm probably used to it. So how different are they? Its obvious that the oil muffin is how muffins were meant to be. The PDQ (Pretty Darn Quick) muffins from King Arthur Flour do say that if you are going to eat a muffin soon after it is baked, you can leave out the oil, and I would be inclined to agree with them. I couldn't taste a difference between the warm muffins (does that mean if I warm them up, it'll be the same? Doubtful...), but the cold yogurt muffins definitely had more bite. Of course, this could be due to the yogurt, not the fact that I left out the oil, so really I should have tried a batch that had nothing replacing the oil. Of course that might be too dry a batter... oh the options!

Conclusion: I am going to continue to make oil-starved muffins to use as training food, and save my oil-filled muffins for when the muffin isn't going to be eaten immediately and its someone other than me eating it.

While I was at it, I calculated the nutrition information for these muffins.
Regular zucchini-lemon muffin (per muffin): 227 calories, 10g fat, 30g carbs, 5g protein (39%, 52%, 9%)
Low-fat zucchini-lemon muffin (per muffin): 181 calories, 4.5g fat, 30g carbs, 5.5g protein (22%, 67%, 12%)

Blueberries Galore!

Last weekend I was racing my mountain bike, and the first field that the course went through was filled with blueberries. There was nothing for it but to go back there after I was done and fill a shopping bag with blueberries. There were so many blueberries that I could just run my hand through the leaves and the berries would fall into the bag. Pure heaven! My one complaint is that we've had so much rain that they were slightly too swollen, not a bursting with flavor as most wild blueberries most years. But who am I to complain? They were still so much better than those bloated store-bought berries!

So how to use them up? It was a dilemma. I don't normally bake with blueberries, since they're expensive, but I didn't think I could eat all of these raw before they spoiled, and since they were so water-swollen I didn't know how they would freeze. The first thing I tried was a blueberry bar recipe from the Canadian Baker's blog. These were delicious, and the crust held up surprisingly well, despite my misgivings. I changed the quantities around a bit, having only an 8x8" pan rather than a 9x13" pan, expecting to use half the recipe, but I ended up using half the recipe for the crust and topping and all the blueberries (1C of blueberries just didn't look like enough). Since I made some changes, here is my changed recipe, which is almost the same as the original.

Blueberry Crisp Bars

Crust
1/2C + 2 tbs flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 stick (1/4C) unsalted butter, softened
1/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

Blueberry Filling
6 tbs granulated sugar
1 tbsp cornstarch
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp lime zest, if you have it (lemon zest would also work)
2C blueberries

Crumb Topping
3/4C flour
2 tbs firmly packed brown sugar
2 tbs granulated sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp salt
3 tbsp butter, melted

Preheat your oven to 350F.

To make the crust, cream the sugar with the butter, then add the flour and salt, and mix until it forms a crumbly dough. Press it into a greased 8x8" baking dish.

In a bowl, dump all the filling ingredients together and mix them to combine, then pour them over the crust. 2C of berries will make a pretty thick layer of blueberry, you could definitely get away with 1-1.5C of blueberries instead (using 1.5 tsp of corn starch for each cup of blueberries).

For the topping, mix the flour, sugars, ginger, cinnamon and salt, and then pour the melted butter of top of that and stir it around until it forms a crumbly mixture. Sprinkle the crumbles liberally over the top of the blueberries. Bake the bars at 350F for 45-50 minutes, until the blueberries are bubbly and the topping is browned. Allow the bars to cool (completely, if you have willpower of steel, which I don't) before cutting them up. I highly suggest a scoop (or two) of vanilla ice cream to go with the warm bars...

Makes 16 bars.

Blueberry-Applesauce-Bran Muffins

The blueberry crisp bars popped into (and out of) existence on Monday. Tuesday we were going over to a friend's house for dinner, so I essentially made the same recipe except that I put a pie crust on the bottom and called it a pie. Two more cups of blueberries gone. Raw blueberries were slowly disappearing, but I still needed to get rid of many more berries. Since the tea kettle was still in the car (unpacking from a 24-hour mountain bike race is a long process), I couldn't make oatmeal for breakfast, so I decided to make breakfast muffins. For a muffin to qualify as a breakfast muffin for me, it needs to be mostly whole grain crap and not be loaded with sugar or fat--at least my breakfasts have to be healthy. The problem with low-fat muffins is that the texture can be slightly gummy if you don't watch out, and they don't keep as well. But right out of the oven, a block of wood would taste delicious!

Ingredients

1C whole wheat flour
1/2C oat flour (grind up some rolled oats in the food processor for 10-20 seconds)
1/2C white flour
1/2C oat bran
1/4C sugar
1 tbs baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
A couple shakes of cinnamon
1C blueberries
3/4C milk (skim worked)
2 eggs
1C applesauce

Any leftover streusle crumble you have from the blueberry bars (optional)

Mix together the flours, oat bran, sugar, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Stir in the blueberries. In a 2-cup measure, measure out the milk, the applesauce, and beat in the eggs. Add the wet to the dry, mixing as little as possible, and then fill muffin tins to the top (makes 12 muffins). I had extra streusel topping, so I put some of that on top. Bake at 400F for 15-20 minutes, until the muffins are golden brown on top.

Ed ratings: He really liked the blueberry bars, and was impressed that the crust didn't get soggy. He also really liked the blueberry muffins, but I think that if you put blueberries in a muffin that boy would eat sawdust, so its not exactly an accurate rating. I told him they were all healthy and whole-grain and stuff, and he just shrugged and took a couple to work to munch on.

I thought the muffins were delicious, they definitely tasted whole-wheat-ish, but in a good way, and even fully cooled they were good, and not gummy. The crunchy topping was awesome, as it always is. They didn't last long enough to get a day two evaluation.

Why do all my muffin pictures always end up as a series of muffin demolition shots? Probably has something to do with the fact that I can't not bite into a steaming blueberry muffin if its sitting in front of me...

Strawberry muffins

I have a serious backlog of yummy things to eat. After strawberry picking, I made strawberry muffins, and Ed really liked them. Ed is my barometer of how good food actually is. Not only did these pass the "not bad" rating, they hit the "these are excellent!" rating (complete with exclamation point). That is pretty rare. I guess what I'm saying is, try making these muffins. They're just the PDQ berry muffin from the King Arthur Flour book, but if you don't have that book yet (after all my raving about it?? geez), here is the recipe.

Strawberry Muffins
2C flour
1/2C sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbs baking powder
1.5C berries
2-4 tbs butter, melted
1C milk (I used skim, because I had it). Or sour cream or yogurt.
2 eggs

1/4C coarse sugar (optional)

Preheat your oven to 500F. Combine the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder in a big bowl. Add the berries, I quartered my strawberries and then chopped them in half again the not-long way. In a separate bowl or two-cup measure, mix the butter, milk, and eggs. Add the wet to the dry, stir until just combined, and distribute among 12 greased muffin tins. Sprinkle ample amounts of coarse sugar to the top of each muffin. Put them in the oven, drop the temperature to 400, and bake for 20 minutes.

Eat!

The Staple Muffin Recipe

The King Arthur Flour Book is the holy grail of baking, as far as I'm concerned. I use this book pretty much every time I use flour, which, as you can probably imagine, is fairly often. Although I like to experiment and incorporate ideas from other people, books, and recipes, my fundamental idea of how flour works is based on the King Arthur Flour Book. On this blog, most of what I put up here are fancy shmancy muffins and stuff that seems complicated. I guess this is because I figure the simple things don't need a blog post. But the simple things are the best, sometimes. I mean, its hard to beat a blueberry muffin. Unless of course you make margarita cupcakes and they flip your world upside down... but that's another post. I figured I'd go through my basic "muffin method", as developed from both the King Arthur book, and from Alton Brown's I'm just here for the food. Alton Brown's book is much more of the science behind the cooking, whereas the King Arthur book has actual recipes, but you can fuse the two to get some pretty interesting ideas... What I really like about King Arthur is that they try the recipes before they print them, which means, they'll actually work. This is pretty important, in the world of Alex.

So, I figured I'd break down the "PDQ" muffin recipe from the King Arthur Flour book. I believe PDQ stands for "pretty darn quick". It is quick, because muffins are easy to make, and then they taste good. Always a bonus. This is the blueberry version.

Ingredients
2C flour (any combination of white and whole wheat)
1/2C sugar
1 tbs baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1C milk
2 eggs
1/4C butter, oil, or margarine, optional.
1.5C berries, of any sort

Preheat your oven to 500F. Once the muffins go in, you'll drop the temperature to 400. This causes them to get nice poofy tops. Grease a muffin tin.

Mix together the dry stuff, as long and vigorously as you desire. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs with the milk and oil if you're using it. According to the King Arthur book, the fat is optional, because it does not affect the taste of the muffin (and it doesn't, I've done the taste test), but it helps the muffin keep longer. So, if you're freezing these babies for future consumption, add it in, otherwise, no need. Butter is expensive these days!

Once you've got your wet goods thoroughly mixed, dump them into the dry stuff. Mix to combine, but only until the last flour streaks are gone. You don't want to overmix, because that will start to develop the gluten in the flour and make your muffins tough and bready. Add your berries. If you rinse frozen berries before throwing them in there, your muffins won't turn purple, but I like my purple muffins. I just throw the frozen ones in there, no need to thaw. This recipe can get away with just one cup of berries, but I also like my muffins berry-ful.

Fill the muffin cups almost full, if you want big tops, or 3/4 full for normal sized muffins. Stick 'em in the oven, turn the heat down to 400, and take them out after 15-20 min. If you want, you can sprinkle coarse sugar on top before baking.


This is the purple batter before baking.


Here they are in their muffin tins, sugar already sprinkled, ready to go into the hot box.


Out they come, all poofy and delicious looking.

Coconut Lime Muffins

More muffins! Ed said these were really good, so that must mean they're amazing. Which, they are. I found a recipe for orange-coconut bread, I don't think I was looking for it, but I found it, and I really, really, really wanted to turn it into muffins. So, I did. Only, with lime instead of orange. And, they were a success. Particularly the crunchy coconut on top. No, I don't understand the urge to make everything into a muffin. Maybe I like things to be small and handheld? Who knows.

Here is the original recipe, I've posted it below with my changes. I made these muffins really full, so that they would have big muffin tops, but the problem with that is the temptation to just eat the top of the muffin.

Ingredients

1.5C flour
1/2C whole wheat flour
1/4C flaked, sweetened coconut
2 tsp lime or orange zest
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4C sugar
1 egg
1 tbs oil
1/4C milk
1C yogurt, plain
2 tbs orange juice
1/4C coconut for sprinkling on top

Thoroughly mix the flour, coconut, baking soda, salt, and sugar. In a separate bowl, mix all the wet stuff. Add the wet to the dry, stirring just until combined. Spoon into greased muffin tins, and top with the coconut.

Bake at 350 for 15-20min until golden brown on top and the coconut looks crunchy. Made 12 muffins with big tops (or 18 regular sized muffins).