Muffin-a-day

Trends in family cooking are ever evolving – one month it is the breakfast egg burrito that might soothe a very brief window for hunger in the morning, another month it is a particular fiber bar that works magic as a daily snack (Fiber One Cookies have filled this role many times, good and...healthy!).

For most of this winter, though, home-made muffins have been the old reliable morning or afternoon option.  Like so many other products at the grocery store right now, the muffin too has been going through a major renaissance. The traditional muffin section in the cooking aisle has come to include any number of mixes that are not necessarily just the new sweet, but also the new healthy.  An apple cinnamon flax mix by 

Hodgson Mill 'gluten free' is a great example of the far end of what is possible when trying to present a tempting muffin that happens to carry more substance than flour, sugar and a fruit.  Frozen sections now offer pre-made gourmet muffins.  The Udi frozen chocolate muffin is just about as good as it gets, with the blueberry not far behind.

Home bakers are resurrecting their muffin tins and finding all kinds of new ways to create little dollops of things inside those little circular muffin receptacles.  An insert in the newest issue of Food Network Magazine – always right on top of the newest home-foodie trends – offers recipes for "50 Things to Make in a Muffin Pan."  Hash brown cups, bacon cinnamon rolls, goat cheese terrines, crab cakes and taco salad cups are just a few of the new and interesting ways to easily cook in clumps.  As a starter, I tried the cranberry oatmeal bites because they seemed to be the closest to what people here in the house eat in the morning: a mix of warm milk, brown sugar, butter, eggs, a pinch of cinnamon, salt, dried cranberries and pepitas (pumpkin seeds), spread out in a 12 muffin tin.  

The obvious thing about this batch is that the healthy ingredients outweigh the sugar content. The dominant taste, then, becomes the cranberry and pepitas, and touch of cinnamon; the brown sugar is there only as a hint of sweet instead of the reversed standard.  These are heavy and fairly healthy muffins, two of them with milk a legitimate breakfast on the go... a homemade prospect that opens up the doors to cooking virtually any dried berry or nut style of choice.