Mocha Oatmeal Muffins from Back In The Day Bakery Cookbook

Note to self: It's not a good idea to bake when you are sick. I turned a simple muffin recipe into an almost two hour venture. I managed not to actually screw the recipe up, though I made an adjustment that altered the recipe a little. More on that later.

Artisan Books is one of our sponsors for Project PB&J, so to promote them Cindy and I decided to bake a few recipes from the cookbook the winners will receive. I learned about Back in the Day Bakery from Cindy and have been mesmerized with their recipes ever since.

BACK STORY -

A long, long time ago, I tried cooking oatmeal with coffee. I learned about it through various blogs and thought it sounded good, but in reality it tasted too bitter and fostered my hatred of oatmeal. But when I saw these mocha oatmeal muffins from Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook, I knew I needed to give the combination a second chance. (Thanks for copying the recipe, Cindy!)

Because muffins are baked (duh), the coffee flavor would have more of an opportunity to mellow and blend with the other flavors. These are described as a breakfast muffin, which makes sense because people often drink coffee and eat oatmeal (separately) for breakfast. However, 'mocha' isn't just coffee - it's chocolate and coffee... For breakfast. But that's okay, since we who eat chocolate tend to be slimmer.

(I really don't eat chocolate very often. I don't eat salads, either... I digress.)

So I carefully measured out the ingredients, double- and triple-checking. When I'm sick, I tend to overlook the most obvious details and make boneheaded mistakes. I did replace half the all-purpose flour with white whole wheat intentionally. The one I'm-going-to-do-it-anyway-and-hope-it-doesn't-mess-anything-up" move I made was to substitute whole oats for the quick oats called for in the recipe. I measured the same amount and coarsely ground them. Once the batter was mixed together and I filled the 12-cup muffin tin, I had extra batter remaining.

I encounter this "problem" quite a bit when I make muffins and cupcakes, and I don't know how it happens. Perhaps I ended up with more oats than the recipe called for, subbed in white whole wheat flour, or I didn't fill up each muffin tin as much due to the makeshift parchment liners.

But I didn't yell or curse, because I had mini cupcake liners! As the first batch baked, I filled almost two dozen mini muffin tins with the remaining batter. They're pretty cute. I'm pretty satisfied.

I liked the way the muffins baked up. There was a subtle tang from the buttermilk, which keeps the crumb moist and tender. The mocha flavor is always a favorite flavor combo of mine, so of course I enjoyed that aspect of this muffin. While they might blur the line between a muffin and a cupcake because of the addition of chocolate, the level of sweetness places it back in the muffin category. It's clearly not a dessert if we're judging it by how sweet it was, though it's special enough to perk up your mornings.

You will not be disappointed if you make these. And I'm going to stop talking because I'm sick and shouldn't be rambling.

Recipe after the jump.

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Mocha Oatmeal Muffins
Recipe from Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook

Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients -

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 1/4 cups quick-cooking oats, plus extra for sprinkling
4 large eggs
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup freshly brewed strong coffee
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup chopped walnuts
Turbinado sugar, for sprinkling

Directions -

1. Preheat oven to 350°. Lightly spray 12 large muffin cups with cooking spray, or fill them with paper liners.


2. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon until thoroughly combined. Stir in the oats.


3. In another bowl, whisk together the eggs, butter, buttermilk, coffee, and vanilla. Pour the wet ingredients over the dry ingredients and mix just until combined. Fold in the chocolate chips and walnuts with as few gentle strokes as possible.


4. With a large ice cream scoop or spoon, scoop the batter into the prepared muffin cups, filling them approximately two-thirds full. Sprinkle the tops with oats and turbinado sugar.


5. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the tops or golden. The tops should be firm to the touch and a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin should come out clean. Remove from the oven and let cool for 10 minutes.


6. Turn the muffins out of the pan and enjoy warm or at room temperature. The muffins can be stored in an airtight container for up to 2 days.

Pumpkin Muffins

On Sunday, which is the perfect day for baking in my not so humble opinion, I had a craving for pumpkin muffins. Conveniently, I had some pumpkin in the fridge that was beginning to mold. What? I let pumpkin rot? I realize that the general impression you get from food bloggers is that pumpkin is akin to gold. While I do like pumpkin, I don't want to have unhealthy relations with it, nor do I want to bathe in the stuff. Really, it's one of the least tasty squashes out there. Have you eaten a spoonful of the puree? Did you have a reaction to it like a baby being forced to eat green pea puree? Perhaps it would taste better if I made puree from sugar pumpkins, but so far I stand firm in my opinion. Butternut and acorn squash both taste better. The only reason people have a creepy lovefest with it is because they saturate it with sugar, spices, and butter, of which I wholeheartedly approve.

Thus, it was beginning to mold.

I had bookmarked a pumpkin muffin recipe from Muffin Top a long time ago. Despite the relative ease, I hadn't gotten around to making them. Shame on me. The picture of the bright orange and the gorgeous crown captivated me. These were going to be good.

Here is the sugar mixed with the spices. I used a little more than 1 teaspoon of various spices like cinnamon, allspice, fresh nutmeg, cloves, and ginger. I think I used too much, because the end result was a dull brown instead of a vibrant orange. In the Muffin Top recipe, she states that she accidentally used an entire 15 ounce can of pumpkin, so maybe that helped with the color.

Quick breads are great because you just combine the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients separately, then mix them both together until a few streaks of flour remain.

The tops are sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, which gives them a nice crunch and extra spicy flavor.

Twenty-five to thirty minutes later, your kitchen smells like fall and you can dive right into a muffin or three. I was disappointed that mine weren't orange, so I'll have to figure out what went wrong there. But the flavor was amazing, and the muffins were so tender. I'm definitely going to make these again, though I'll add cranberries and pepita seeds next time.

If you made it this far into the post, here is the link to the recipe again so you don't have to scroll up.

william shatner's cappuccino muffins

I've been wanting to make these muffins for a while now, partly because I love anything coffee-related, partly because I thought it was cool how these might possibly be from William Shatner. Come on, the man was captain of the Enterprise. After retiring, he became a lawyer in Boston. He gets around, and he still finds time to be in the kitchen!

Of course, I changed up the recipe because I wanted to make these in the manner of a cupcake. Ideally, I wanted to brown the butter, let it cool, and beat with the sugar. I could have simply mixed the browned butter with the milk, but I was aiming for a lighter texture.

What happened next, since I was too hasty and didn't let the butter cool, is that the butter and sugar didn't whip properly because the heat sort of dissolved the sugar. After I added the egg, the mixture looked similar to a congealed mayonnaise mixture. In the end, the batter came together without a problem and resembled a pretty nice cupcake consistency.

Besides the browned butter, I replaced the cinnamon (too warm a flavor for the current heat wave) with cardamom (probably the same thing, but it seems lighter) and used only 1/2 cup chocolate chips. For the crowns I sprinkled 1/2 teaspoon sugar on top of each cup to look pretty. Unfortunately, I didn't remember that I had ground coffee beans mixed with sugar, otherwise I would have gone with the gold.

Based on pictures of other bloggers' cappuccino muffins, I had high expectation that the crowns would beam up into epic proportions. And they did! One of the most beautifully baked up muffin recipes I've ever encountered, and I was pretty happy. I also didn't grease the sides of the muffin tins, which I think is a Cook's Illustrated technique as it allows the batter to "grab" the sides and rise higher, if I recall correctly.

The texture was soft and fluffy, with just enough sweetness to make it appropriate for brek-fast, elevenses, you name it, spread with a sweetened whipped coffee cream cheese-butter spread (which I just thought of at this moment). The espresso flavor wasn't particularly strong, and the cardamom wasn't detectable whatsoever, though I'm thinking the combination of the two flavors with the browned butter, accented by vanilla, is what made the muffins tasty. If you would like a stronger coffee flavor, adjust the amount of espresso powder to suit your tastes. Definitely a repeat worthy recipe, though next time I'll bake the original version for comparison.

Recipe after the jump

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william shatner's cappuccino muffins
His original recipe with my mods

12 muffins

ingredients ~

2 cups all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons instant espresso powder
1/2 teaspoon cardamom
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, browned and cooled to room temperature (you can refrigerate the butter to speed up the process, but make sure it doesn't completely solidify)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup milk, room temperature
1/2 cup chocolate chips
extra granulated sugar

directions ~

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Spray the bottoms of a 12-cup nonstick muffin tin.


2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, espresso powder, cardamom, and salt.


3. In a large bowl, beat the butter with the sugar for 3 minutes on medium-high speed. Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat until mixed. On low speed, blend in one third of the flour mixture, followed by half of the milk. Continue alternating the flour and milk, ending with the flour. When a few traces of flour remain, stir in the chocolate chips just until mixed.


4. Divide batter evenly amongst all 12 muffin cups. Sprinkle each top with 1/2 teaspoon sugar. Bake 15 to 18 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in center of muffin comes out clean. Let muffins cool in tin for 5 minutes before removing to cool on a wire rack.

apple doughnut muffins

From what I can gather, doughnut muffins are supposed to be a much simpler way to get a doughnut, somewhat of a cross between an actual muffin and a cake doughnut. Even if it's nothing like a doughnut at all, it's still very tasty in its own way

There are two methods to make doughnut muffins, one being creaming butter with sugar to create a really tender crumb, then there's the standard muffin method of dry ingredients mixed with wet ingredients. When I found this recipe online, which originated from Joy of Cooking, I decided to use it a) because I was lazy and it used the wet-dry method, b) it had yogurt and I figured it would enhance the taste, plus the variation of the original method used confectioners' sugar as the topping and it made the muffins all the more tastier.

Most recipes call for rolling the baked muffins in butter and shaking it in cinnamon-sugar, but that seemed unnecessarily messy so I used a pastry brush to coat the muffin tops, then dipped the tops in confectioners' sugar with some apple pie spice. Not only did I use less butter (I only melted 1/4 cup to begin with), but it made it easier to eat.

My other change was to replace the vanilla extract with lemon extract, add a bit of freshly grated nutmeg, and a grated Granny Smith apple. The apple seemed to break down and mix with the batter so it wasn't detectable at all, but the flavor was really great.

Were these almost like the cousin of a cake doughnut? In a way, it was. The crumb, while light and melty, wasn't quite as spongy but tighter. The tenderness was incredible, and I enjoyed the flavor more with the few minor changes I made.

Recipe after jump

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Print this recipe

apple doughnut muffins
Recipe modified by me, from here

Makes 12

ingredients ~

2 cups flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
Gratings of fresh nutmeg
1 Granny Smith apple, peeled and grated
2 large eggs
1 cup plain yogurt
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
4 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tsp lemon extract
Topping:
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/3 cup confectioners' sugar
½ tsp apple pie spice, or cinnamon and nutmeg

directions ~

1. Position oven rack in the middle position and preheat oven to 400-degrees F. Line a standard muffin pan with paper cups. (I just thoroughly greased the cups; I forgot to try the Cook's Illustrated method of only greasing the muffin cup bottoms.)


2. Whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together grated apple, eggs, yogurt, sugar, oil, and lemon extract. Add flour mixture and mix with light strokes until the dry ingredients are just moistened. Don't overmix; batters should not be smooth.


3. Divide batter among the muffin cups and bake until a toothpick inserted in one or two of the muffins come out clean, 15-20 minutes.


4. While the muffins are baking, melt the butter butter and place in a bowl just large enough to hold a muffin. Combine confectioners' sugar and apple pie spice in a small, shallow bowl. As soon as the muffing are done, brush the tops with butter and dip in sugar mixture. Set on a rack to cool.

big beautiful banana muffins

My love affair with America's Test Kitchen continues with a recipe for muffins. The basic recipe is plain with options for various flavors, and I chose the banana. A couple changes I made were to replace half of the flour with white whole wheat, not subbing brown sugar for the white, and not adding walnuts, though I used slightly more than the amount of finely diced banana called for to make up for it. That's right, the bananas weren't mashed, and I kind of like that.

Using yogurt as the liquid, along with eggs and melted butter, the recipe whips up quickly and even can be made a) ahead of time, and b) ahead of time and frozen in pre-portioned "cups" for future baking, which I'll be trying out later for the sake of testing.

The texture is moist, spongy, and soft. It didn't have a mouth-melting quality of a muffin made where the butter is beaten with sugar, it was light and good for what a muffin should be.

To make the crowns large and domed, the same Once Upon a Tart principle of filling the tins to just below the top is implemented with the ATK muffins. I still wasn't quite pleased with the overall height, though I figured I slightly overmixed the batter since didn't have the correct egg size and used 2 tablespoons less butter because I didn't want to cut into another stick, so I quickly beat a third medium size egg with a few tablespoons of milk and stirred that in. I wouldn't say it was really overmixed, but it probably was just by a bit. I also got 17 muffins instead of the 12 they said, most likely due again to the extra additions. I didn't see when they said to fold the extra ingredients into the batter, but I'm assuming it's before all the wet and dry ingredients have been folded together properly (a few light streaks of flour should remain).

One mistake I realized I made was that the recipe says to mix the wet ingredients with dry just until combined, then fold in melted butter. Obviously, I did not do this, and they make no explanation for why this method differs. This only means I'll have to make even more to see what happens.

I had a little ATL experiment of my own, one I've noticed in the past, too. Whenever there isn't enough batter to fill all of the cups in the muffin tin, I fill the empty cups halfway with water. I notice the muffins in the tin with water tend to have a higher crown than those in tins filled with all batter, even though the steam should hit all of them. Interesting.

Also, I notice that if the muffins come out at a certain height, after cooling they fall down a bit, even if cooked completely. Is this a steam being released thing going on?

Edit: These were delicious. Not too sweet, yet a perfectly accented banana flavor. I already noted the texture above. Here are some previously blogged banana bread recipes: black-and-white banana loaf, GT's banana bread, Mom's favorite banana bread.

Anyway, I have a few more recipes I've made that I need to blog about. If I don't, I certainly will talk about it. I may get them all out of the way in one sweet post. In the meantime, enjoy the recipe for muffins after the jump.

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big beautiful banana muffins
Recipe from The America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book

Makes 12

ingredients ~
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups whole milk or low-fat yogurt
2 large eggs
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 1/2 cups finely diced bananas

directions ~

1. Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 370 degrees. Grease a 12-cup muffin tin.


2. Whisk the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg, and salt together in a large bowl. In a medium bowl, whisk the yogurt and eggs together until smooth. Gently fold the yogurt mixture into the flour mixture with a rubber spatula until just combined, then fold in the melted butter. This is where, maybe along with the butter, I'm guessing you also fold in the bananas.


3. Using a greased 1/3-cup measure, portion the batter into each muffin cup. Bake until golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out with just a few crumbs attached, 25 to 30 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through baking time.


4. Let the muffins cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then flip out onto a wire rack, and let cool for 10 minutes before serving.

savory cheese and scallion muffins

Or, why I love Christopher Kimball.

See, I've caught episodes of America's Test Kitchen before on PBS, and I like how they try and find the simplest, best, and most reliant method of creating a recipe so that anyone is able to do it. For obvious reasons, that means whatever you make, if you follow the methods and recipe, will come out how it's supposed to -- or what I really mean, how it's supposed to look.

Part of why I like to bake is because I like creating things, and then I like eating the creations. But, I'm into aesthetics, so I want whatever I bake to look like I put in the effort. I know I'm not the only crazy person like this, and I really don't think it's all that crazy.

When these muffins came out, I just smiled. It's one of those simple pleasures.

These muffins are just great, a nice savory, cheesy flavor with a bite of scallion thrown in. I'd say the texture is between a spongier biscuit and a traditional muffin. The batter is quite thick, but it doesn't make up heavy. And don't be afraid of using all the batter in just 12 muffin tins because it's what gives the muffins their nicely domed crown.

Perfect with soup, perfect as a snack, or as part of lunch, and even better with half white whole wheat, which gives it a little nutritional boost that sticks with you longer.

Recipe after the jump.

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savory cheese and scallion muffins
Recipe from The America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book

Makes 12

Grating the Parmesan on the large holes of a box grater adds a nice texture to these muffins and helps prevent the cheese from burning; do not grate it fine or use pregrated Parmesan.

ingredients ~
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
4 ounces sharp cheddar cheese, shredded, or blue cheese, crumbled (1 cup)
2 scallions, sliced thin (I used about 4)
1 1/4 cups whole milk
3/4 cups sour cream (I had none, so I briefly strained some yogurt -- use about 1/4 extra to compensate for the drained liquid, making sure to remeasure)
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 egg
1 1/2 ounces Parmesan cheese, grated on the large holes of a box grater (1/2 cup) (I omitted this because I had none)

directions ~

1. Adjust and oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 12-cup muffin tin.


2. Whisk the flour, baking powder, salt, cayenne, and pepper together in a large bowl. Stir in the cheese and scallions, breaking up any clumps, until the cheese is coated with flour. In a medium bowl, whisk the milk, sour cream, melted butter, and egg together until smooth. Gently fold the milk mixture into the flour mixture with a rubber spatula until just combined (the batter will be heavy and thick).


3. Using a greased 1/3-cup measure, portion the batter into each muffin cup. Sprinkle the Parmesan over the tops of the muffins. Bake until golden and brown and a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out with just a few crumbs attached, 25 to 30 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through baking.


4. Let the muffins cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then flip out onto a wire rack and let cool for 10 minutes before serving.

I Can't Always Get What I Want - pumpkin cream cheese muffins

(** Sorry for the delay in posting. My laptop with all my files crashed and it needed to to be restored. Luckily, the computer dude was able to restore it without wiping out my files. Note to self: Buy extra USB drives for backup. **)

First, I'll take you through the steps I did to create my pumpkin cream cheese muffins (note: neither the pumpkin muffin recipe nor the cream cheese recipe were my own, I just used two different recipes and added stuff to it. I would normally give you the links to where I found each, but I messed this up a little and would rather not have my mistakes associated to their recipes):

The ingredients are prepped

Besides the required ingredients, I also added the grated rind of one orange. And besides that, I wanted to see how this recipe would come out via the two-stage method (mixing the fat with the flour).

What you are looking at there is the sliced cubes of cream cheese mixture and the flour mixture after the butter has been added to it.

And right here is the dry and wet ingredients mixed together with some flour not thoroughly mixed. At this point, and something I've encountered with this recipe even when followed as per directions stated, the mixture was much too dense and thick. I added about ¼ cup of milk. Next time, I'll decrease the flour by ¼-½ cup.

The result was still a bit thick, but... wow I'm drawing a blank... but more to the correct consistency for a muffin batter than before. I'm very wary of over-mixing a quick bread.

Here are the filled tins, just about a smidgen below the top. (I recognize that this picture makes it look like the batter is flush with the top of the cups, but it wasn't exactly. It was about a little beneath it, though some may have been right at the top -- I learned that from the Once Upon a Tart cookbook.) The empty tins were filled halfway with water (I swear the steam helps them rise better or something. Or something, have any of you noticed that the stature -- yes, I just used an animal/human word to describe my baked goods -- of your muffins decreases after sitting out of the tin post-bakeage, even the next day? Is it due to the moisture in the air? Sometimes it happens after they cool, even when baked long enough so as not to sink in the center).

Here you see the topping mixture of the grated rind of one orange to ¼ cup of sugar. The other picture is a sugar-dusted cream cheese cube-filled cup of pumpkin muffin batter. Don't push the cube in all the way.

The freshly baked muffins, cooling in the tins, with pats of butter on top to soak in! NOT. But it was sort of funny. :D

What you may or may not be able to see from the last picture is that due to the cream cheese cubes being made to cheesecake-esque, it didn't ooze enough to penetrate the entire muffin, though I most certainly got the too-much-oozing-it-looks-mucus-y issue down... Also, I didn't add nearly enough spices resulting in less than an essence of spiciness. Basically, if I hadn't known I put spices in the batter, I wouldn't have even been able to taste it at all. That and it was gummy. Remember how I often speak highly of the quintessential spongy factor, where you are able to press (lightly press, like with the carefulness of Jedi mind-strength that gives enough force to prove your point without being overpowering) down all the way and it pops back up into shape, all the while not having the mouth-feel of a piece of rubber? Sponginess these muffins had not.

It made me very depressed, as failed baking excursions are wont to leave me... Next time, I won't add an egg or a tiny bit of flour (I was aiming for a consistency between uber-runny and too set), perhaps adding some milk to thin it out a little (around a tablespoon), increase the spices x4 (I did increase it x2 the first time), and use a wee bit less flour.

At least it looked pretty. And the tea was nice (it was Nutcracker Spice from Celestial Seasonings). I'd say that I can't always be perfect but it sounds all sorts of wrong. Oh, and I'm not having a pity-me party, I just like discussing every facet of what went awry so as to ingrain it into my brain, "DO NOT REPEAT!"

End of story. :D