Thursday, March 13, 2014

If you give a mom a recipe...



...she'll just change it!

A few weeks ago I decided to make muffins every Sunday night for the coming week's breakfasts. It's nice to know that everyone is eating breakfast rather than starving until lunch time. And...so far it's working out. Except for one thing...I never use the same recipe twice. I use recipes as a guide, not as law. So I add some of this, add some of that, lessen a bit of this, etc.

Basically, I wing it.

And luckily, the muffins always taste good. But the texture? Well, that's another story.

Week before last I made two dozen muffins...and each muffin must have weighed about 5 pounds. I forgot to add baking powder. And man, were those muffins dense! Tasty. But dense. Chris didn't mind them...thought they were good and filling. I ate them, because I don't like waste. And Ian? He opted out of muffins for breakfast that week.

This past Sunday I made another batch of breakfast muffins. This time I added "berry bits"...frozen bits of strawberries, blueberries and raspberries packaged for smoothies. But really good in a muffin, I must say. I remembered to add the baking powder and even tossed in a little baking soda for good measure (Note to self: read up on what does what in baked goods.).

The result? Tasty. Mixed berries are yummy in muffins. And they had just the right amount of sugar...a mixture of granulated and brown. Texture? Eh. I am finding them to be a bit on the chewy side. Too much baking powder? Shouldn't have added baking soda? Not enough moisture to balance the added flax? Maybe I should only replace half the oil with applesauce rather than all of it? (This is where I'm leaning...especially when adding flax.)

I guess it would make my life easier if I'd just find a recipe, follow it exactly, see if we like it, and if so, then start adding this and adding that and making changes all willy-nilly. Novel idea, eh? But...what fun would that be?

Hey. I'm a risk-taker. What can I say?

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