Muffins, Part 2

For the past couple of weeks, Claire has been doing some skating on Saturday mornings. For weekend-skating mornings, she and her friends have a little tradition called the Sunshine Morning Breakfast Club. That means that she (meaning me) makes something to bring along to share with her friends.

This week, "we" again made two varieties (although they were made tonight rather than tomorrow morning in a mad frenzy, like last week). For tomorrow's breakfast club, it's a batch of Chocolate Chip Muffins, sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, from Lauren Chattman's Mom's Big Book of Baking; and Double Chocolate Chunk Muffins, from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours.

In a gesture of unfathomable selflessness, Claire took one of the Chocolate Chip Muffins for a test drive tonight and very much enjoyed it, commenting on how much she liked the combination of the cinnamon-sugar and chocolate flavors. I hope that the rest of the skating crew enjoys them tomorrow morning, too.

Apple-Ginger Streusel Coffee Cake

When I saw this recipe at the Fine Cooking Web site, I wondered how I could possibly have overlooked it when it was originally published. Then again, in November 1995, I was more concerned about month-old Claire than I was about any coffee cake that involved streusel and ginger. What can I say? I'm just glad that I noticed it now, nearly 13 years later.

All in all, it was mostly worth the wait. There is a lot of prep involved in this cake: streusel (including chopped walnuts) to be blended, an apple to be chopped, crystallized ginger to be minced. My only error with this cake was making it in the 12-cup Bundt pan, which I absent-mindedly grabbed instead of a 10-in. pan, as called for in the recipe. I would definitely have gotten more height from the cake in the smaller pan, and also might have gotten a bit more definition in the streusel weaving through the cake.