Last night, I experienced firsthand the compelling phenomenon known as the Baking Kick. Baking kicks involve an overwhelming sense of goodwill that drives one to spontaneously start cooking up delicious treats for everyone. Either that or an increasing sense that the housemates will put something with too many legs in your bed sheets if you don't. Anyway, I made muffins.
Let's talk about muffins. For the reluctant baker, muffins are the perfect way to start. They come in endless varieties (both savory and sweet) and are forgiving of small mis-measurements. Muffins are thought to be invented by colonial American housewives. Back then, they were known as "quickbreads" because, well, they were a smaller, quicker version of bread. They were made in small individual cups instead of a loaf pan, which cut down on baking time. The batter was chemically leavened while baking using "pearlash" (the old-school equivalent of today's baking powder).
Proper bread dough, on the other hand, has to be yeast-leavened at room temperature, which can take hours. Many believe that the evolution of muffins parallels that of cupcakes - apparently the idea of miniaturizing breads and cakes was a great hit because today many baking books devote entire sections to muffins and cupcakes. However, though cupcake batter and cake batter are often interchangeable, bread dough and muffin batter are two entirely different stories altogether.
I am often told that the key to baking is proportion. Professional pastry chefs keep a kitchen scale around at all times because it is mass, not volume, that matters. You don't need to blow $35 on a kitchen scale, though, because volume can often give a good approximation of mass with many ingredients, particularly liquid ones (and you don't need to be that obsessively exact).
As for other ingredients, such as flour, you just need to know that the volume can vary greatly depending on density, and how to adjust according to what the recipe needs. A good baking recipe should specify whether its per-cup measurements are for packed or sifted flour, but if it doesn't, err on the side of sifted. American cookbooks usually mean sifted, and also, too much flour may cause your baked good to be dry.
If you don't have a flour sifter, you can roughly fake it by putting some flour in a cup and lightly shaking it while pouring so that the flour sprinkles lightly into a bowl.
The proportion of the leavening agent (that which makes the baked good rise) to the rest of the recipe is also particularly important. This changes depending on what you are baking, but for muffins an ideal puffiness can be achieved with two and one-half teaspoons of double-acting baking powder OR four teaspoons fast-acting baking powder per three cups of flour.
By the way, the reason that salt is used in baking goes beyond taste. Salt greatly steadies the chemical reactions in the leavening process. In other words, without salt, your muffins won't explode, but they may not rise as evenly. Salt also increases the elastic strength of dough which is helpful if you are baking bread or a pastry crust and you need to roll out some dough.
All this may sound a little complicated, but don't worry. If you follow recipes through carefully and don't leave out any steps or ingredients, your muffins will turn out quite delicious and disappear quickly. The half-life of baked goods at my apartment, for example, is about three minutes.
A few last tips to ensure muffin success (and also to make you sound extremely erudite at social gatherings): Recipes will often direct you to mix dry and wet ingredients separately. This is to ensure uniformity. When you combine the wet and the dry later, mix manually (i.e., without an electric mixer), and do not over-mix.
The general rule is 12 strokes for perfection. Random, but workable. The batter will be lumpy, but no large pockets of dry ingredients should remain. Also, you can buy standard-sized disposable foil muffin trays for about a dollar. (All these recipes assume a standard-sized 12-muffin tray.) I also suggest investing in paper muffin cups because you won't have to individually grease every depression in the muffin tray.
Okay, I'm done lecturing. Now go and make your whole dorm wish that you were their friend.
Snappy Ginger Muffins
Ingredients:(fills one 12-cupcake muffin tin)1/2 cup vegetable oil1/4 cup sugar1/4 cup brown sugar1 cup molasses1 egg3 cups flour2 1/2 tsp. double-acting baking powder1 tsp. cinnamon1 tsp. dried ginger (or twice that, if grated fresh)1 tsp. nutmeg (optional)1/2 tsp. salt1 cup water
1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2) In bowl beat the oil and sugar. Beat in molasses and egg. You can use an electric mixer if you have one to speed the process.
3) Combine the dry ingredients in a separate bowl.
5) Manually stir the dry ingredients into the wet mixture alternately with the water.
6) Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups 2/3 full if you care about the tops being nicely picturesque and round. Or fill them all the way if, like me, you want more muffin and less pretty per cup.
7) Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean.
Strawberry Shortcake Muffins
Ingredients:1/2 cup butter or margarine, room temperature1 1/2 cups granulated sugar4 large eggs1 teaspoon vanilla extract3 cups all-purpose flour2 1/2 tsp. double-acting baking powder1/2 teaspoon salt1 cup fresh or frozen strawberries, diced1 cup milkgranulated sugar for topping
1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2) In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar; beat in eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Blend in vanilla extract.
3) In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt.
4) With a sturdy stirring device, stir dry mixture into wet mixture. Remember the 12-strokes rule. Gradually stir in milk until batter is moistened.
5) Spoon batter into prepared muffin pan, filling each muffin cup about 2/3 full. Evenly spoon sliced strawberries onto the center of each muffin and sprinkle each with a little granulated sugar.
6) Bake strawberry muffins for 20-25 minutes until knife inserted comes out clean.
