dry ingredients

I made a lot of yogurt the other day, but have not made any more granola, so we haven’t been eating it.  Because of that, I know have a pleathera of yogurt, and not wanting it to go to waste, I began looking for something to make with it. And where better to look, then  The Book of Yogurt.  I had had it for a while, because I thought, when I first go it, that it would teach me how to make yogurt. It does, but only in the beginning. The rest of the book  tells you want to do with the yogurt once it is made.

First thing, was to find something that I had the ingredients for. I chose the yogurt muffins, as they seemed simple enough.

Here is what it called for:

• 2 cups flour (I used rice)
• 1/3 cup sugar (I used raw sugar)
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg well beaten
• 2/3 cup yogurt (I ended up using about 2 cups or so)
• 4 tablespoons of melted butter
• Also: one mashed banana, one cup of blueberries, and 3/4 a teaspoon of xanth gum

the mix

The recipe said it would be lumpy, but with my usual problems with using non-wheat flour, I figured I would use extra yogurt, to make it smoother. It was much smoother, and moister, and actually mixed up rather well. I used the blueberries which had started to be a little on the mushy side, and the banana which was in the same state.

out of the oven

The recipe called for putting it in the over for half an hour at 400F. I tried one batch that way, and the second batch at 350F. 400 worked best.

Other than the muffins not rising, as they so often don’t, they were very tasty. I will have to figure out how to make them fluffier.

Putting the mix in the tins

A while ago, when Cartoonist started middle school, I thought I would help her with ideas for her lunch, and bought a book called “The Healthy Lunchbox.” I had forgotten that we even had the book, until I started looking through the cookbook shelves to see what I could come up with for her to make for lunch.

I handed it to Cartoonist and said, find some stuff to make for your lunch. She picked out the Carrot or Zucchini Muffin mix.

Well, which is it going to be? I asked her, as we had plenty of both. She looked at the recipe and said “Both”.

So I grated up the carrots and the zucchini, and she mixed up the other ingredients.

• 1/2 cup of olive oil (they called for canola oil)
• 1/2 cup honey
• 2 eggs (or 4 egg whites, which she would have done)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups grated zucchini and carrots
• 2 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup flax meal
• 1 cup brown rice flour
• 1/3 cup buckwheat flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• Bake for 25 minutes at 350F

What was amazing was that we actually didn’t have to make any substitutes, we had all the ingredients. What a novel idea.

Finished muffins

We must have done something wrong, because it said it would make 2 dozen, and it was more like 18 and they were very flat, but they were good, so we decided that we would make this one again.

The lumpy batter

I mean really what the Frick!!? We were actually going to try to make a recipe without changing anything!! you heard me!! NOTHING!! zero, zip, nada, nothing! No ingredient was changed!!…well maybe there was a little swichero on the flour but that doesn’t count OK!

Anyway my mom and i both thought that it would be fun to make something without changing anything for once.  We thought “Oh what could possibly go wrong?? We’re following the god damn recipe! The recipe will guide us”… Did the cooking gods agree with our small change? NO! NONONO they did not! they thought “Ohh they’re trying to make something from the book! lets make their batter look like bread dough!”

That’s exactly what they bloody did! While i was mixing the batter thinking of that this might make a good breakfast tomorrow, i noticed the batter wasn’t really batter anymore. Pointing this out to my mom she was concerned, but we both decided what the hell and into the muffin tin the “batter” goes.

The glazed muffins

Despite their appearance they were actually very good with the glaze on top which goes to show kids…NEVER FOLLOW A RECIPE, CHANGE IT!! At least they were not as bad as those bloody macaroons (by the way if i sound way to British and sweary today blame Dr Who and Zero Punctuation)

Amendment by Admin: The recipe was from page 97 of the Broccoli Forest cookbook. We changed from white flour to white rice flour. I did add a dash of xianth gum, but looking back, I think I should have used a few more eggs.

In the morning, since we didn’t put the muffins away the night before, the glaze had hardened, and the muffins weren’t bad. The lemon was very lemony, which I liked. Still, more like a biscuit than a muffin though.

The beginnings of the ingredients

Nahhh, i’m a teenager it didn’t occur to me, besides i had already thought of a backup plan. My fist idea was strawberries which were..meh. The next day i decided to make it again but this time i used unsweeted chocolate nibs.They are very very bitter, just by themselves but my thought was they would taste better when cooked. Of course i was faced with another delema which was i didn’t have lemons. So i used (drumroll please) ORANGES!!

Whats the worst that could happen?? I only switched out the flour with white rice flour, blueberries with chocolate nibs,lemon to orange,and milk to soy milk (Silk). Oddly enough they turned out pretty well. Besides being overly crumbly, I’d say for people to give it a go.

Want to know who the hell i am?? go to the cartoonist page!

And now, I, admin, am going to talk about how we made these, with pictures yet.

Chocolate nibs and raw sugar

The main thing was we wanted to cook something with chocolate in as raw a form as we could. We didn’t want any added stuff, so I was quite happy when I discovered cocoa nibs. They were just bitter cocoa bean bits. They were perfect for what we wanted to do. We would add our own raw sugar, so control the sweetness.

I have found that if you read ingredient list, you would be surprised how much added crap there. Since I started making granola, I have checked out what store bought ones have it them, just in case there is something I want to add. What I notice is that they put a lot more sugar into everything.

how small the nibs were

We both weren’t sure how the nibs would work, not having used them before, but that is what cooking by experiment is all about.  My neighbor, when I told her about this, said she usually only changed one or two things in a recipe, so when it did or didn’t work out, she would know what had caused it.

Yeah, well, we didn’t do that. Oh well.

The finished muffins

Oh, but we were quite happy with how things turned out. A little flat, as often happens with gluten free, but still quite tasty.

And, cartoonist actually wrote down how she changed the recipe, in the book. (see below). So, if we want to try this one again, and perhaps add more baking power, or something, we can do that.

The alterned recipe

The page of the book. It does say Blueberries

So, I was too busy to make anything today, so my daughter gave it a spin. Since I had the Moosewood Cookbook out, she read it over at breakfast and decided she was going to make blueberry muffins.

Only thing is, she forgot to tell me that fact. She only said, “I’m going to make muffins”.

So, I went about my day, and she went about her day, and we ran errands, such as going to pick up our CSA, and going to the dentist, and going to her art class. In the afternoon, we went to the farmers market where they were selling blueberries,  big quarts of blueberries. We walked past them at least twice, on our way to and from the cherries and strawberries. Did she say, “oh, we need blueberries too?” She did not, though I asked her what we needed.

The Strawberry Muffins

So, back to the homestead, and back to work, chatting with clients, putting things together, and my daughter mixing up her muffins. Every-so-often, she would ask my opinion, such as how much would a cup of strawberries be, and what to use instead of milk in a recipe. (I told her since it was volume, one cup was one cup, and she decided to use yogurt and soymilk for the milk substitute).

The muffins turned out, not bad, but they were not blueberry muffins. She had used whole wheat flour, when the recipe had called for white.  And it could have worked, but the taste was slighly…just not quite right.

Ah well, that is part of life. If we all followed the recipes exactly as they were written, life would be dull.