Muffin Win!

I really needed something to go right today.

Today was one of those crappy days. I didn't sleep well last night, we started double iterated integrals in calculus class and the prof warned we're going to speed through it toward the final, the grocery store told me they wouldn't exchange the buttermilk I accidentally bought for the real milk I really wanted (some stupid rule about not exchanging perishables after they leave the store.... um, I didn't notice when I grabbed it, how the hell am I supposed to notice before I get home??), it's quarterly report time at work, the line up at the post office was ridiculous and then the clerk took like 10 minutes and three phone calls to find the right form (yes, Recipe Guy, I mailed your headphones back to you), I forgot to get eggs on the way home and had to go back out for them, and then the applesauce I'd been planning on turning into muffins had turned into mold.

If I had railroad-train pajamas, someone would probably make me wear them.

Gah!

It was 8 pm and I hadn't even had dinner, nevermind finish the assignment that's due in my mechanical engineering class tomorrow.

And so, I decided to wing it.

Again.

I have now decided that March is wing it month. No clue what I'm going to make next week, but I'm sure as hell not going to have a recipe handy when I start.

So, with no applesauce, and utter determination to make muffins, I came up with these:

Oatmeal Date Muffins

What you need:

• 1 c quick oats
• 1 c flour
• 2 tbsp ground flax seed
• ½ c sugar
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• ¼ tsp cardamom
• 1 c chopped dates
• ½ c butter, melted
• 1 c plain yogurt
• 1 c pear juice (or apple, or orange, or even milk)
• ½ tsp vanilla
• 1 large egg

What you gotta do:

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Holy crap I remembered. Win! This is looking good already.

Put all the dry ingredients (oats, flour, flax seed, sugar, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, and cardamom) into a big bowl,

And mix them together.

In another bowl stir together the yogurt, egg,

vanilla (crap, there’s no vanilla in the ingredients pic), and butter.

Now, I wasn’t sure I’d need the juice, but once I had the wet ingredients all together I figured the mixture wasn't “liquidy” enough. It seemed too... gloopy.

So I decided to add ½ c of pear juice.

That helped. More liquidy.

Now the dates. They’re so sweet that sugar has started to form on their surfaces.

These things are sticky and sweet. If they were hot, you'd have Def Leppard in your head now wouldn't you?

They’re also really soft and easy to chop up. And if you use the same butter knife that you used to cut up the butter, and to level the flour in the measuring cup, you only have to dirty one knife. What? I had to use an extra bowl, I’m going to conserve any way I can.

Pitted dates. Yup, pitted. See the pit? Bastards.

Once you’ve mashed/chopped a packed cup of dates… hm. Add to dry or wet? I opted for wet. But the wet bowl was a little on the small side, and it was tough to bust up the packed cup…

So I just dumped it all into the dry ingredients and started stirring.

About half way through, I realized I didn’t have enough liquid. This is where I added the other ½ c of pear juice. This is a dangerous thing to do. (not easy to photograph either)

I've had to add liquid at the end of a muffin recipe before and what came out of the oven was more like a hockey puck than it was a muffin.

When you make them, put all the juice into the wet bowl.

Mix the wet into the dry just enough to get it all combined. The dates seemed to break up nicely as I stirred. The reaction between the baking soda and yogurt had already started and the batter was nice and fluffy.

Divide the mixture into 12 muffin cups.

Bake for 20 minutes. A toothpick should come out clean. If you don’t have toothpicks, and I never do, spaghetti works just as well.

Let them cool in the tin for a few minutes before taking them out to finish cooling on the rack.

I was a little worried about how these would come out since I had to add that emergency ½ cup of juice at the end, but OMG muffin win. These things are soft, dark, moist. Just barely sweet, and with nice chunks of dates.

And since Taneasha's always piling muffins up into little pyramids, I thought I'd try too...

So, what went right for you today?

so, I still have a blog?

Welsh Cakes to make amends for my lengthy absence.

Yes, I know, I've been gone for a while. And yes, Taneasha is actually totally fucking awesome. Not only did she cover me with her lovely nuts, she also put together an epic year end clip blog of all the weird crap and awesome shit we did all year. Me, I was getting fucked. Proper fucked. And making all kinds of tasty foods. Everything from fancy Mexican late night dinners to desserts that make the kitchen look like a scene out of Dexter to elusive Italian cookies that you pay for then they somehow don't make it home in your grocery bag.

And I introduced Recipe Guy and his family to one of my family traditions. Well, family recipe. The tradition kinda changed with the generations.

My grandmother was Welsh and made these amazing tasty little treats to have with tea. Welsh Cakes. But when she made them, they were tiny, sugar coated, and you were damn lucky if you got 2 out of her. She was not the sort of plump cuddly grandma who stuffs you full of cookies and love that people like to imagine. She had a switchblade cane (okay, really, it was a little ice grip on the bottom, but we wouldn't put it past her at all to use it on one of us if we pissed her off).

When my dad started making them things changed. No longer were single batches made. Not even double. Not triple. We used the large punch bowl to make quintuple batches. We didn't roll and cut them nicely, we formed great hulking patties with our hands. And we didn't begrudgingly hand them out as if they were made of solid gold. Oh no, we each got a large paper grocery bag with our name on it, and the Welsh cakes were evenly distributed among the bags for us to then hoard and eat at our leisure.

They became fully negotiable currency.

What my littlest brother wouldn't do for a welsh cake.

And it seems it's not just Cymry that love these scone-like cookies (really, I think they're only called cake based on the archaic method of describing the shape of them), oh no, Southern Momma took a right shine to them.

I'll bet you two that you do too.

Welsh Cakes

(we made a double batch, this is the recipe for a single)

What you need:

• 2 c flour
• 1/2 c sugar
• 2 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 c butter
• 2/3 c currants
• 1 egg
• 2-3 tbsp milk

A couple notes on ingredients:

1) Yes that is all the liquid in it, and yes you will panic your ass off as you mix, but yes, it will work. You'll see.

2) Currants. Currants are not raisins, contrary to what the morons and bastards at SunRype would have you think.

Despite what it says on the package, these are not currants. They are just small raisins marketed as currants. The US doesn't seem to have proper currants. Dried fruit and candied citrus peel are typical, but I really don't think raisins work in these. Even tiny ones claiming to be currants. So we opted for dried blueberries and a bit of lemon zest.

What you gotta do:

In a large bowl combine the flour, baking powder, salt, zest (we used about a tbsp), and nutmeg.

Now, you're going to have to "cut" in the butter like you would if you were making a pastry or a scone. You start with smallish chunks of cold butter just dropped into the bowl.

Taneasha tried this with two knives, and really the woman needs a pastry cutter. If you don't have one, you can try the knife thing, or just use your hands, like she did. I would also suggest a food processor for the cutting of butter into flour, but only once you have an idea of what it's supposed to look like so you don't over mix it.

The first few times you use a pastry cutter you're going to think it's totally fucking useless because this happens.

But then you realize that you just have to use a knife to scrape the chunks off and keep going until you get something that looks more like fine bread crumbs.

And when you squeeze a handful

it should do this, and hold its shape

but it should easily disintegrate when you poke it. 

Whisk in the blueberries. Or currants. Or candied orange and lemon peel. Or any combination thereof that you think would be tasty with a nice cuppa tea. I still don't recommend raisins.

In a small bowl, beat the egg and milk together. Yup, that's all the liquid you need. I really recommend starting with only 2 tbsp and adding the third a few drops at a time if you really feel like you need it.

Make a well in the dry stuff and pour in the egg.

In not too long your wooden spoon will be caked and need to be scraped with that knife you still have handy.

And then eventually you're just going to dig in with your hands.

This dough can tolerate a bit more handling than a real pastry, but still, best to get it out on the counter as soon as possible and just press it together.

I forgot to take a pic of the dry, crumbly looking mound of dough, but I think you'll get and idea of what it looked like before I started rolling when you see this:

Yup, cracked and floury, and you are totally sure it's completely bitched. But, you keep rolling anyway. And ... wtf, you have to actually add flour to stop it sticking to the rolling pin? I know right. Totally bizarre seeming.

But for some reason, the more you roll it

the more it starts looking like a cookie dough.

This is one of the strangest recipes and Recipe Guy was well past skeptical.

You can break off little chunks and roll them then flatten them in your palms, or you can just cut a grid with that knife and make square ones, or you can use a wine glass to cut rounds and make "cakes" of dough.

No, I did not forget to preheat the oven.

These are cooked on the stove top. A good cast iron pan, a wide flat nonstick, or an electric frying pan (does anyone even have those anymore??) will work just fine.

Medium low was all we needed to get them nicely browned.

And you can just leave the dough on the counter and it won't dry out. And you can just press the scraps together and roll them, and you'll probably even need a bit more flour to prevent the rolling pin from sticking.

Dude, I'm not making this shit up. It's a weird old-school, old-world recipe that defies modern, North American conventions and beliefs.

They puff up significantly when they're in the pan. That's one way to tell they're ready to be flipped. The other is that the edges will start to look white.

They only take a few minutes on each side to get nicely golden. You don't want the heat too low, or they'll dry out in the pan before they get brown enough, so you'll probably end up sacrificing the first couple to get the right temperature.

Really, the dark ones are good, but they don't make for the nicest presentation, so you may as well just eat them yourself.

And you don't want them too pale. They seem to look nicer when they're more brown than golden.

If you don't have people hovering around you waiting for them to be fresh and hot right off the pan, pile them onto a plate. 

This will likely be the one and only time you get to present them like this. Next time, they'll be waiting.

What kind of cookies did your grandmother make for you?