The Muffin Experiments Part 1: Sweet Muffins and Apple Pie Muffins

When I asked my boss which desserts we'd be focusing on introducing in the next couple months, as we gradually have more time for experimenting as the bread baking process becomes increasingly streamlined, the main answer was muffins. She told me that she wasn't terribly experienced in the art of gluten free muffin making (this from a woman I swear has done absolutely everything from nursing to theater light design to cooking for 900 people), and so I volunteered to show her the ropes. Since then I've come up with a dozen or so variations on the basic muffin recipe that I had and I tried two last night. In the next few weeks, you'll probably be seeing a lot of muffins, but hopefully, they will be different enough to be interesting and worth reading about.

Sweet Muffins

The first recipe I used last night was one I had done before and had good success with. These are similar tasting to the cinnamon bread I made a few weeks back, but the best thing about them is the smell. The taste is very mild and they aren't overly sweet, but they smell extremely sweet, and you enjoy the muffin much more if you inhale while eating.

What you will need:

• 2 tablespoons oil
• 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup plain yogurt
• 1/2 cup rice flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

Topping:

• 1 tablespoon butter, softened
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• pinch of ground cinnamon

-Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line or grease nine sections of a muffin tin.

-Mix the oil with the sugar. Add the eggs. Mix until light yellow and a little thicker. This will take a minute or two with your mixer, or mix by hand until the batter is light yellow with bubbles. Add the other ingredients. Beat well. The batter will thicken a little and be very fluffy. Divide among the nine sections of the muffin tin.

-In a small bowl, combine the butter, sugar, and cinnamon for the topping. The directions say to sprinkle this mixture on top of the muffins, but I find that the consistency is not sprinkle-able, and I usually just divide it up into little glops and put four or five of these glops on each muffin. The butter will melt into the batter during baking, so the odd appearance won't matter in the long run.

-Bake for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle tests cleanly.

Notes: I would err on the side of underbaking with these muffins. There is nothing more awful than an overbaked muffin and I kept these in the oven closer to 17 or 18 minutes. These are verty good with breakfast, especially warmed up and with a little additional butter.

Apple Pie Muffins

I had read several versions of this recipe with gluten in them and they seemed fairly simple. I felt the name "Apple Pie Muffins" seemed a bit luxurious for such a simple, normal looking recipe, and thought to call them Apple Cinnamon Muffins or Apple Streusal muffins. After trying them myself, I changed my mind. They are extremely moist because of the apple pieces inside the muffin and the streusal on top adds a richness that is not normally present in a muffin and that's where the "Pie" came in to the title. I used the Sweet Muffin recipe with a few minor adjustments.

What you will need:

• 2 tablespoons oil
• 1/3 cup golden brown sugar, packed
  
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup plain yogurt
• 1/2 cup rice flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
• 3/4 cup cored and peeled apples, chopped small

Streusal topping:

• 4 tablespoons butter
• 1/2 cup rice flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon xanthan gum
• a pinch of ground cinnamon
  

-In a small bowl, mix all ingredients until it forms a fine crumb.
-Follow directions as listed above for prepping and mix all ingredients (as directed) except for the apples. Mix well and add apple pieces. Divide among the nine sections of the muffin tin.

-In a small bowl, mix all ingredients for the streusal topping until it forms a fine crumb. Sprinkle over the tops of the muffins.

-Bake for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle tests cleanly.

Notes: I am still debating about whether 3/4 cup apples is a bit too much. My 1 apple came out to about a cup of apple pieces, which I was trying to use all of. It looked like enough once I had mixed 1/2 cup of apple pieces in, and at 3/4 cup I realized it was no use. The muffins were extremely tasty but I worried they were a little too moist because of all the fruit.

I listed the streusal recipe (which I finally realized didn't need milk at all, unlike my previous listing of this recipe) in its full amount, which is enough to cover a pie. I used about 1/4 of this recipe (which gets rather complicated when you try to measure 1/16 of a teaspoon) and it covered 6 muffins. These muffins, I realized, after baking, could have been more thoroughly covered. Perhaps 1/2 of this recipe would be closer to what is needed.

Alternatively, if you don't want the streusal, you can take left over apple pieces and arrange them in a flower pattern or whatever pattern you like on top of the muffin. The batter is thick enough that the apple pieces will remain on top. I added a sprinkle of cinnamon on top of this, but it didn't look so good after baking.

(The Sweet Muffins recipe was was the rice based version taken from Roben Ryberg's "You Won't Believe It's Gluten Free," and a potato starch, oat flour, and corn starch based version of this recipe also exist. The Apple Pie Muffins recipe was a slightly altered version of the Sweet Muffins Recipe, alterations invented by me. )

Ginger Molasses Cookies Experiment

During my graham cracker experiment, it occurred to me that said recipe would work pretty well for ginger bread as well. Instead of going for ginger bread men and the harder type of ginger cookie, I decided to start with a more classic looking soft cookie, as I really don't have much experience with ginger molasses cookies. I tried to imitate a classic cookie recipe, using ground ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, and molasses for flavor.

Here's what I did:

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/3 cup brown sugar, packed
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons yogurt
• 1 1/3 cup rice flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 teaspoon xanthan gum
• 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 3/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/4 cup molasses
• white sugar for sprinkling (optional)
  

-I preheated the oven to 375 degrees F and greased a cookie sheet.

-I creamed the butter with the brown sugar, then added the egg and mixed well.

-I added the remaining ingredients (except for about 1/6 cup of rice flour and 1/4 teaspoon of salt) and mixed. The resulting mixture was a little too wet and a little too bland. I added the remaining flour and salt and this seemed to help. The dough was still quite sticky and probably could have used some corn starch (Which goes a long way to help dry out sticky dough without making it taste too heavy) but I was low and I wanted to stick to rice flour if possible.

-I scooped the dough out by the tablespoon, rounded it into balls with my hands, and pressed the balls to 1/4 inch thickness in the pan. It made 26 cookies. For about half the cookies, I sprinkled a little white sugar on top.

-Baked for 9-10 minutes, until they were just barely browning on the edges and transferred immediately to be cooled.


Results: As you can see, the appearance was very like the classic ginger cookie (though the first picture, without the flash captured the pretty brown color and the cracked top better. They weren't quite so orange as in the picture above) and while it may seem silly to be grateful for a round, domed cookie, it is surprisingly easy to come up with cookies that look like misshapen lumps rather than cookies. These looked very much like cookies.

The thing that struck me when I first tasted one of these cookies was that they didn't taste very much like ginger cookies, or like much of anything. They were only slightly sweet and slightly spicy, which was rather disappointing. The ones with a bit of sugar tasted a bit better because the sugar added some of the sweetness that was missing. Secondly, two types of cookies came out of the oven: The ones that were removed from the hot pan first were extremely fragile while still warm and the ones that were allowed to sit on the pan and bake just slightly longer had a little bit of a crunchiness on the outside and retained their structure better while still warm. I found the second kind more pleasant. However, once the cookies had cooled completely, things switched. The cookies that had been cooked slightly longer were a little too chewy, as if they were stale, and tasted rather dry. The first set of cookies were now pleasantly soft (no longer falling apart) and retained more of their moisture.

Notes: The main problem with the cookies seemed to be the flavor. I figure this could be easily fixed by increasing the amount of spices used, and certainly the amount of sugar. Normally, 1/2 cup of sugar is used in my cookie recipes, but I was going off of my graham cracker recipe, which I specifically lowered the sugar amount for in order to get it closer to a cracker.

For texture, striking a balance with more corn starch to keep the dough dry and light and yogurt to keep the texture moist would be the most beneficial I think, although i am still wondering if there is a way to use only rice flour in recipes such as these which require an additional wet ingredient such as molasses. I think additional xanthan gum may also be required, because, again, a great deal more xanthan gum is typically used in my cookie recipes than I used here, due to using my graham cracker recipe as a guide. I also think that with additional xanthan gum, it would be safe to remove these cookies from the oven a little earlier, say 8 minutes, as the softer texture seemed the better one overall.

Despite the fact that these cookies weren't quite what I was hoping for, I ate them all in a matter of three days. I guess that's what happens when you're alone in a house with a fire, a dog, a good book, and a plate of cookies!

(This recipe was purely of my own invention.)