30 July 2013

Recipe: CSA grab-bag breakfast muffins

A quick follow-up to yesterday's recipe for CSA grab-bag ragout. We were graciously invited to a gathering to meet the new baby of an old friend over the weekend. I didn't get a chance to hit the shops for a gift, so I figured I would bring something edible. Taking a gander at what I had on hand from this week's CSA, I saw peaches and carrots, and I noted that the party was scheduled for a brunch-type of hour. So I decided to bring something a little sweet, but not too dessert-y for the crowd.

Amy Daczyzn includes what she calls a "universal muffin recipe" in The Complete Tightwad Gazette. It's a wildly flexible recipe for using up odds and ends around the pantry and fridge -- or, I should say, using CSA produce efficiently!

These are not the supersized, cake-like muffins you get at the coffeeshop. They're dense and filling. The carrots and whole-wheat flour give you some fiber, which I remember needing in the early weeks after my daughter was born. And I think they taste great when spread with a little cream cheese or soft butter, served with coffee. Or with mimosas, which were on hand at baby Eddie's party.

Ingredients:

  • 1 1/2 cups white flour
  • 1 cup whole-wheat flour
  • 1/4 cup white sugar
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • ground cinnamon and nutmeg
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1/4 cup vegetable oil
  • 1 egg, lightly beaten
  • 2 small peaches, chopped
  • 2 medium carrots, grated

    Method:

    Heat oven to 400 degrees F. Grease muffin tins with butter.

    Combine the dry ingredients and spices. Add the wet ingredients and stir gently until mixed. Fold in the peaches and carrots.

    Bake 20-25 minutes. Remove and let sit about 15 minutes, then remove muffins from pan. Serve immediately, or let cool completely on a wire rack before storing or transporting. Yields 10-12 muffins.
  • 2 comments:

    Anonymous said...

    Can I assume that the universal muffin recipe is what you've provided here, just minus the peaches and carrots? (Though daaaaaamn. Peach/carrot muffins sound *really* good.)

    Unknown said...

    Thanks!

    This isn't exactly the universal muffin recipe, because I'm a hippie who always ups the whole-grain flour content while using a little less sugar. But you do want the same volume of flour (2 1/2 cups). Today, for example, I'm making them again but as more of a dessert thing, so I'm using 2 cups of white flour and just 1/2 cup of whole-wheat flour, plus a little under twice the sugar, and a tiny bit of brown sugar sprinkled on the tops before putting them in the oven. They look a lot more like coffeeshop muffins this time around.

    The universal recipe calls for something like "2 pieces of fruit," if I recall correctly. When you chop it up, that works out to about 2 cups of fruit. So you can put in, say, 1 banana and 1 apple. Or a pint of blueberries. Or 1 pear and 1 cup of raspberries. Here, the carrots don't add much volume at all when they're shredded, so I still used 2 peaches.

    I didn't want to copy out the universal recipe wholesale, but other bloggers have had fewer scruples and it's easily googleable.