1 post tagged “baking illustrated”
I haven't told the stories of the carrot cake I made out of the Baking Illustrated recipe, or my disappointing Paula Deen blueberry muffins- seriously? You'd think Paula "Queen of Butter" Deen would have really tasty muffins but they were actually boring. I thought I had pregnant brain when I made them, because I was sitting there while they were in the oven and I'd think oh! I forgot to put spices in! or oh! I forgot to add the vanilla! Then I'd look at the recipe and realize no, she doesn't use any. What? Anyway, my last couple baking efforts have been passable at best.
Lately the baby's been making me want herbs and spices, like sage and cinnamon. I was looking through Baking Illustrated, thinking wouldn't it be awesome if I baked everything in there and blogged about it, when I saw the coffeecake muffin recipe. Ooh! Cinnamon!
I was not thrilled when I started the recipe and found out I was going to have to pull the food processor out of storage. Sigh. I hate cooking with the food processor. I have a Kitchenaid, that's what you're supposed to bake with. I noticed there were nuts to chop so okay, I decided to use the food processor. I started by chopping together the nuts, some cinnamon and brown sugar and managed to get everything sesame seed sized like they asked, but not in five one second pulses. I started going one, two, three, four, five and there were still a lot of large chunks of nuts. Crap. Then I tried ooooone, twooooooo, threeeeeee, and somewhere in the middle of four it was good. Okay. I separated them out into two bowls- one to mix in later, one for topping- and moved on to the batter.
Oh, the batter. Flour, sugar and salt, mixed with the food processor. Then you add the butter, which was softened and sliced, and process until it looks like oats. Okay, except zap number one? All the butter disappeared. Crap. I think they shouldn't have had you soften the butter. Don't you usually use cold butter when you make streusel? I added some of the flour mix into the streusel top, stirred it up, added the rest of the dry stuff to the food processor and went to the wet stuff. Sour cream? Check. Vanilla? Check. Egg? Frick. Somehow the eggs had been put on the top shelf of the fridge and half of them had frozen and cracked. Damn. This is why I hate top and bottom fridges. Anyway, I found one that was okay and mixed up the wet stuff, then added it to the batter. Again with the one second pulses, and that's where I hit the problem. Pulse until it's moistened? Again, one shot. Then add the streusel and pulse till the streusel's distributed and everything's crumbly? Um, one pulse and everything was mush and not at all well distributed.
I think, had I been thinking, maybe colder butter in larger pieces- half inch pieces did not do it for me here- and I would have been willing to do it in the processor because that is an efficient way to cut it in. However, then I think I should have transferred it to the Kitchenaid and mixed it up the rest of the way so it didn't get to be such a mushy mess. When it came time to add the streusel, definitely stirred it in by hand. Oh well. Moving on!
Putting them into the cups and getting the streusel on them, not a problem. Then I forgot about the last time I baked something from Baking Illustrated and took them at their word- 350 for 18 minutes, turning halfway. When I made the carrot cake the recipe said 35-40 minutes and it really took over an hour. I put the muffins in and was talking to the Husband on Google chat and another friend on Facebook and left them five minutes over how long they needed to go and ew. Gooey. I put them back in the oven and decided whenever I thought about them next I'd check. I think it ended up being about twice the time the book said, about 35 minutes before I checked them again and they were done according to my toothpick. Stupid Baking Illustrated.
After all the bitching I did about these muffins, they came out looking okay and were pretty tasty. The Husband and I each had one and really liked them. I credit the sour cream. The Husband, who is not a nut eater, didn't notice the nuts. I'm not sure why, because I did. Anyway, I think I've learned my lesson. Tomorrow I want to make their quick cinnamon roll recipe and I'm totally going to check after the amount of time they say they need to bake, but be prepared to take them out after twice that time.
I did some googling and apparently I'm the only person out there who has a problem with Baking Illustrated. Huh. It really makes me wonder what my problem is, then. You know, they go through and work and work and work and fine tune their recipes and it's not like they're in Denver- or I'm in Denver, for that matter- making these recipes and having to adjust for altitude. I follow the recipe. I don't substitute things. I seriously doubt my silicone baking cups would have made that much difference in this instance. I just don't know. We'll see tomorrow.
