Monday, August 10, 2009

Chemistry Lesson (Muffin Failure!)


After numerous attempts, I've finally created the perfect breakfast muffin. They can be made with numerous combinations of fruit and nuts, and they contain a good balance of monounsaturated fats (olive oil & nuts), protein (yogurt & eggs or eggbeaters) and fiber (wheat or oat bran and whole wheat flour. Despite all of this healthy stuff, they have a lovely cakey crumb and aren't at all dry or heavy. Usually.

Tonight I mixed up my current favorite, cranberry orange. They taste just like the box mix of cranberry quick bread that we made when I was little. (Was that the first marketed use of dried cranberries?) I didn't realize that I forgot the olive oil until the batter was already in my reusable silicon muffin cups. I scraped it out back into the bowl and added the olive oil. As I suspected, it negatively affected the texture of my finished muffins. Instead of being fluffy, they're leaden and kind of oddly smooth. To make things even worse, the orange I collected the zest from was a little too squishy for zesting and doesn't taste all that great. I just realized too, that I used baking powder instead of baking soda. They didn't rise very much, but I'm assuming that's mostly because they were overworked with the late addition of the oil. Over all they taste ok, they're just not the incredible success that was the previous batch.

These are the good ones. I can't wait for cranberry season!!

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