Real Food Has Curves

We had some good friends up this past weekend and at the end of it all, one of them summed it up by saying "we sat and ate and talked."

It was a chilly weekend, the leaves gone, so we made roaring fires (Bruce accuses me of building pyres) and indeed talked, and ate, and sat to our hearts' content. We read Philip Larkin poems--especially "Water" and "High Windows" (one of my favorites for so many reasons) as well as Emily Dickinson (#576--"I prayed at first a little girl") and e e cummings (like "The Boys I Mean"--surely one of the best snarls from an effete New Englander ever).

Our friends left after breakfast on Sunday; Bruce and I then raced down to New Haven, judged a bar-tending contest that afternoon, had a lovely dinner out, and came trudging back up to the country quite late.

I guess I was yearning for a little more of that "sit" thing from this weekend, so I got in the kitchen after lunch and whipped up a batch of muffins, homey little treats that are a lovely thing on a long, workaday afternoon, a little bit of the weekend in the middle of everything else. (See, I told you I don't believe in time.)

These are wheat germ muffins. When we were testing recipes for THE ULTIMATE MUFFIN BOOK, we discovered their secret. Admit it: they can be like leaden pucks. But the secret is to cut down the oil or fat. Most recipes increase the fat to make up for the added germ. But no, the trick is to go the other way, thereby taking some of the lead out of them and using things like bananas to make up for the moisture.

Here's how I made them: I began by preheating the oven to 425F and by greasing the indentations in muffin tins for 18 muffins (I used one that held twelve muffins and one that held six).

I put 2 large eggs, 1/2 cup unrefined sugar (nothing overly processed, after all--only real food as we've established), and 1/2 cup honey in a mixer bowl and beat these things at medium speed until the sugar had mostly dissolved. (I had to scrape down the bowl a few times to make sure the honey got completely mixed into the batch and didn't lie like a gooey clump on the bottom of the bowl.)

Then I mixed in 1 1/2 cups whole milk and 2 very ripe bananas, crumbled between my fingers into little bits. And finally I added 1/4 cup walnut oil and 1 tablespoon vanilla extract. I let the thing whir around for a long time, until the mixture was almost uniform (some chunks of banana were in there). Honestly, at this stage of the game, you can't overbeat it.

Now I stopped the beaters and poured in 2 1/3 cups un-bleached all-purpose flour, 1 cup toasted wheat germ, 2 teaspoons baking soda, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon, and 1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg. I know there's a lot written about mixing the dry ingredients first in a separate bowl. I find it unnecessary for sturdy batters like muffins. I simply put the flour and other things in first, then add the leavening (the baking soda and powder) on top. That way, the leavening doesn't get wet too quickly and sinks into the batter after the flour has already begun to be incorporated, allowing better distribution.

I let the mixer beat it on the lowest speed just until there were no undissolved bits of flour anywhere. But here comes one warning: all-purpose flour is actually a little tricky. It stores ambient humidity and so reacts differently in batters on different days. You may need to add a little more to get your batter to this consistency--about like waffle batter, not pancake batter.

I then scooped the batter into the prepared muffin tins. Here's another little tidbit: there is no standard muffin tin. Sizes are difficult to judge. The indentations in mine are a little more than 1/3 cup, not quite 1/2 cup. Others can be larger--say, 2/3 cup. Since there's no standardization, it's hard to predict exactly how many you'll make. Again, I made eighteen with mine. The important thing is that each indentation is filled three-quarters full.

And one more thing: there's a myth about filling the unused tin indentations with water before baking. Um, no. That's utterly a kitchen myth. You don't have to worry about it. And if you've only got one tin, just set the remaining batter aside and make a second batch when these come out of the oven.

Bake until risen and brown, until an toothpick inserted into one comes out with a few moist crumbs attached, between 18 and 20 minutes. But start checking them at about the 15-minute mark, just so you know where you stand. If your indentations are larger, they'll take longer, maybe even 25 minutes. Mini-muffin tins will take much less time, maybe just 8 to 10 minutes. And so these tins that are just muffin tops? I have NO idea--because I can't imagine shorting either the top or the bottom of a homey, sweet, and relatively healthy muffin.