Muffin Malady and Pizza Pick-Me-Up
So, I tried the blueberry muffins I mentioned in my last post, and they still need a little bit of work. My "second chair" on the official taste test was ckmostri - whose skill and knowledge in the Muffin Arts is the stuff of legend 'round our place.
In preparation, the muffin batter seemed far too thick, and I wound up having to pack it into the muffin cases like a dough rather than a batter. (I was using the last dregs of milk in the house, so I suppose an error in measurement is not entirely out of the question. I also cooked the apple by coring, slicing, and microwaving in a plastic wrapped food storage container before pureeing in a small food processor. A larger apple would have loosened the batter nicely.)
We found the muffins to be less sweet than we would have liked, and the interior was too gummy. I think that in trying to control our very hot oven, I may have undercooked them, which might have yielded the poor texture. I also noticed that the muffins didn't rise too much, and that the batter remained in the spikey, irregular shape I'd packed into the muffin cups, rather than melting into the gently domed structure shown in the picture. Next time I think I'll also take Alton Brown's suggestion (from the Good Eats episode "The Muffin Man") of reserving a tablespoon of dry ingredients to toss with the blueberries to aid in getting the batter to stick to them.
I'll have to attempt these again later. Follow up coming whenever I do so.
As for the pizza I mentioned last time, I have added some tweaks to the recipe as a comment to that post, so check them out if you want to try my variation that yielded a much more pleasing pie.
In preparation, the muffin batter seemed far too thick, and I wound up having to pack it into the muffin cases like a dough rather than a batter. (I was using the last dregs of milk in the house, so I suppose an error in measurement is not entirely out of the question. I also cooked the apple by coring, slicing, and microwaving in a plastic wrapped food storage container before pureeing in a small food processor. A larger apple would have loosened the batter nicely.)
We found the muffins to be less sweet than we would have liked, and the interior was too gummy. I think that in trying to control our very hot oven, I may have undercooked them, which might have yielded the poor texture. I also noticed that the muffins didn't rise too much, and that the batter remained in the spikey, irregular shape I'd packed into the muffin cups, rather than melting into the gently domed structure shown in the picture. Next time I think I'll also take Alton Brown's suggestion (from the Good Eats episode "The Muffin Man") of reserving a tablespoon of dry ingredients to toss with the blueberries to aid in getting the batter to stick to them.
I'll have to attempt these again later. Follow up coming whenever I do so.
As for the pizza I mentioned last time, I have added some tweaks to the recipe as a comment to that post, so check them out if you want to try my variation that yielded a much more pleasing pie.