Last week, while icing my cranky SI joint at physical therapy, I read in
Better Homes and Gardens that the week of April 2 is National Baking Week. My reaction? "Yes! A reason to bake!" As if I ever need one. I started my celebration of National Baking Week a little early, baking one thing yesterday and two things today. First up, whole wheat cinnamon raisin English muffins.
For Christmas morning breakfast 2010, my sister made homemade English muffins using the
recipe from the King Arthur Flour website. The muffins were fantastic and surprisingly easy, so soon after I gave them a try myself, substituting white whole wheat flour for half of the flour. Those came out well, so I eventually started making them with all white whole wheat flour and also substituted honey for the sugar. As I had often been eating Thomas' whole wheat English muffins (with peanut or almond butter) for breakfast, the homemade version soon became my breakfast staple. For a while I was making a batch about every other weekend and keeping them in the freezer. As you might imagine, Thomas no longer gets my business. After a while I tired of eating and making English muffins and started eating something else for breakfast (I'm currently on a trend of eating muesli made with steel cut oats). However, back in the day when I was eating store bought muffins, I would sometimes buy the Trader Joe's whole wheat cinnamon raisin English muffins and throughout the time when I was regularly making muffins, I often wondered if I could replicate those, but never tried it. Yesterday I was browsing recipes and found a
recipe for whole wheat raisin English muffins on The Kitchn. I HAD to try it! So, try it I did and even broke my own rule of making a change to a recipe the first time I make it. I wanted my muffins to be whole wheat CINNAMON raisin, so I threw caution to the wind and added 1/2 tsp cinnamon to the dry ingredients. I'm happy to say that the muffins are delicious and I didn't even screw them up by changing the recipe. I now have a whole batch in the freezer ready for me to eat anytime.
My next National Baking Week project: blueberry orange cornmeal muffins. I wanted to make some type of muffin to bring to the office on Monday because I have a 9 am meeting and everyone knows meetings are more fun when there are snacks. I also already had a muffin recipe in mind I wanted to try. For many years I have subscribed to Martha Stewart's Everyday Food magazine, and every January there is a "light" issue. This year the light issue included four recipes for low fat baked goods. I generally stay away from low fat baked goods because I never think they taste very good. I hate when people say things like "Oh I used applesauce in these brownies instead of butter and you can't even tell the difference!" I want to say "Really? Here, try my brownies made with butter. See, they are far more delicious." Anyway, despite my normal reaction about low fat baked goods, for some reason I was intrigued by these particular recipes, and one of them was this
muffin recipe. I have previously made two of the other recipes,
vanilla cupcakes with fruit glaze (substitutes cannellini beans for some of the butter) and
gingerbread mini cakes (substitutes pumpkin for some of the butter). Both of those recipes were really good, so I felt pretty confident the muffins (which use lowfat yogurt in place of some of the butter) would be as well. It turns out the muffins are in fact very yummy (I had to try one today before feeding them to my co-workers tomorrow). I was a little concerned about them because either there is a flaw in the recipe or I screwed up. The recipe calls for a cup of plain lowfat yogurt. I bought Greek yogurt because in the non-Greek yogurts I could only get nonfat or whole milk plain. I was a little worried that the Greek yogurt would be too thick, so I decided to use about 7/8 cup yogurt and 1/8 cup skim milk. When I mixed up the batter, it was really really thick and more like biscuit dough than muffin batter. I added more milk until it seemed like an appropriate consistency. Fortunately the muffins turned out well, but either the recipe doesn't call for enough yogurt or Greek yogurt is really just too thick for this recipe. Next time I'll have to locate some low fat plain non-Greek yogurt.
Last, but not least: molasses cookies! My co-worker recently got engaged and I wanted to make her some celebratory cookies. Last time I brought molasses cookies to the office she declared that they were her favorites of all the cookies I make, so they seemed like the perfect choice for her engagement cookies. I always use the recipe for soft molasses cookies in the
King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion. The recipe can also be found on the
KAF website. The cookies always taste great and have a wonderful soft texture. This time was no exception. Now, I just hope she doesn't read this post before she gets her cookies tomorrow morning!
As National Baking Week will be going on all week, I hope to find the time for some mid-week baking so I can fully celebrate. I don't have anything specific planned yet, but I'm sure I'll think of something!
