I’m doing a bit of a format change in the subjects. Since I now have the Cooking subsection of the blog, I no longer need to separate out the recipes with the Random Recipe tag. Also, the boy almost always cooks with me, so I’ll just include his commentary and insights along with the recipes.
Mixing the dry ingredients
Tonight’s entry involves two favors of muffin: mint chocolate chip, and almond. The base recipe is taken from the geniuses at Cook’s Illustrated. You will notice that I mention them a lot. Being the geek that I am, the only thing better than a good recipe is a recipe that explains why it’s good.
The root of this muffin-making venture came a few weeks ago on a Sunday morning trip to Peet’s. The boy carefully surveyed the baked goods case and asked why there were no mint chocolate chip muffins. I’d never heard of such a thing, and he asked me to make them. I tried another recipe that was incredibly dry, but nicely flavored. This recipe had all the hallmarks of a moist muffin, and the flexibility to add flavors as needed.
Ingredients
- 3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
- 1 Tbsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp table salt
- 10 Tbsp butter, softened
- 1 cup granulated sugar, minus 1 Tbsp
- 2 large eggs
- 1 1/2 cups plain low-fat yogurt
- Flavorings of your choice
Instructions
Preheat to 375 degrees with the rack in the lower middle position. Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a separate bowl. Set aside.
"It's starting to look like muffin batch!"
Beat butter and sugar with an electric mixer on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes or whenever the 3-year-old screams, “It’s ready! It’s ready!” Add eggs, one at a time, beating well with each addition. Add one half of the dry ingredients. Beat in one third of the yogurt. Beat in half of the remaining dry ingredients followed by half of the yogurt. Repeat this step until all ingredients are incorporated.
If you’re making two flavors of muffin, as we were, divide the batch in half. In one bowl, we added about 3/4 tsp mint extract plus about a cup of mini semisweet chips. In the other bowl, we added 1 tsp of almond extract (it turns out that the almond could have used more flavor).
After baking
After lining approximately 18 muffin cups with muffin papers, we used a large ice cream scoop to divide equal amounts into each cup. To the almond muffins, I added a sprinkling of sliced raw almonds to the top, plus a small dusting of granulated sugar. We baked until the muffins were golden brown and passed the toothpick test, about 22 minutes.
Set on wire rack to cool slightly, about 5 minutes.
Taste test in progress
Results: Two thumbs up. “Both of them are great. BOTH of ‘em. But this one (mint chip) is greater.” After a little bit more munching he declared, “They’re amazing good!”
Second opinion: I gave a plate full to a friend, who reported back via email that they were, “FANTASTIC. FAN. tastic.”