The Best Muffins

I'm not always necessarily fond of Cook's Illustrated's self-aggrandizing need to label their recipes "best." I think that there can be wiggle room for tweaking and customizing recipes here and there. Besides, what is best to one palate is maybe not someone else's cup of tea.

That said, I used a CI recipe to make a batch of Mocha Chip Muffins, and they are amazing. They taste great (not too sweet, nice coffee flavor), and look terrific (big domed top, firm moist crumb). The batter is stiffer than other muffin batters I've baked with lately. I was a little afraid that I was overfilling the muffin tin, but that stiff batter worked out: The muffins didn't overflow the pan, just baked up nice and tall.

I made the Mocha Chip Muffins (photo above) for a meeting I attended tonight, and I've got a batch of plain chocolate-chip muffins (photo below) in the oven to go to the skating rink tomorrow morning.

I will be using this recipe again. Probably frequently.

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.

Every Peanut Butter Cupcake in the Book

For a recent work birthday, I needed to make something that involved chocolate and peanut butter. I'd started to feel that over the years, I'd done all the varieties of things I could make (cakes, pies, ice creams), so this year, I opted for cupcakes. When I perused Julie Hasson's 125 Best Cupcake Recipes, I ended up deciding to make all four of the peanut butter-chocolate cupcake recipes. Each one made a dozen cupcakes, so I was sure to have leftovers. I made a double batch of her peanut butter frosting for half of the cupcakes; for the other half, I used a chocolate buttercream.

Savory Scones

I don't often bake savory items, but when I saw the recipe for Bacon-Cheddar-Scallion Scones on the King Arthur Flour blog, I was intrigued. I could be completely vegetarian if it weren't for bacon. Put some bacon in a biscuit with cheddar cheese and scallions (I used chives in the scones I made)? Is it possible that this could be the perfect food? By all accounts, this scone might in fact be the perfect food.

Birthday at the Lake

I'm behind on blogging, as usual, but a couple of weeks ago, we celebrated a birthday after a Sunday-morning run at the lake. After breakfast, I broke out this beauty. It's from the More From Magnolia cookbook by Allysa Torey: chocolate cake and chocolate frosting. I know I've made this cake before and liked it a lot because I have made notes about it in my copy of the book, the most important note indicating that it should be baked in three 9-in.-dia. pans instead of two.

Thanks for not ordering the pancake this year, John.

Orange Marble Pound Cake

This cake is from a recipe in The Buttercup Bake Shop Cookbook by Jennifer Appel. I've kind of had an eye on this recipe for years because it uses club soda as an ingredient; it's a little off the wall. All in all, this cake was good, with a bright orange flavor. My only issue involved the chocolate swirl in the center. The recipe directs you to remove a portion of the batter, then mix in unsweetened cocoa powder. Although the cocoa blended into the batter just fine, the chocolate center was really dry after baking. If I try this one again, I'll add a little extra liquid to the cocoa batter before spooning it into the Bundt pan.