Comfort Food: Blueberry-Blackcurrant Muffins

It's nearing the end of summer here. In fact some say that the summer had already come and gone by the middle of August. Yesterday I had to put on a sweater and crank the heat in the car. This seems somehow... wrong. Unfair even. The only thing I had to make up for the dismal weather was a bowl of blackcurrants I had picked the day before. Yes, I am that weird woman in her short shorts, batman t-shirt and Lindsay Lohan shades holding a little white bucket, picking currants off the bushes in public parks. I'm doing the city a service. And you can't stop me!

Anyhow...

I decided that the currants would go pretty well inside muffins with some blueberries. What I didn't count on was how much of a pain it would be to de-stem each and every one of these finicky little berries. I think I sat through 2 episodes of Mad Men while cleaning and separating (I didn't miss much--Don Draper was dashing and intense, Peter Campbell was creepy and intense, Peggy Olsen was weird and intense, and Roger Sterling was busy getting syphilis).

In the end, I managed to produce these delicious cakey muffins adapted from Sur La Table that were all eaten while the berries inside were still molten hot. Always a good sign I think.


Easy Morning Muffins with Blueberries and Blackcurrants
Adapted from The Art and Soul of Baking by Cindy Mushet, page 148

2 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup plus 1 tbsp sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
3/4 stick of butter (unsalted)
finely grated zest of one lemon (I used 1 tsp lime oil instead and it was really yummy)
2/3 cup buttermilk
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
6 oz fresh blueberries
4 oz fresh blackcurrants

1. Preheat oven to 400ºF. Prepare muffin tins. Blend together flour, 2/3 cup sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. In a medium skillet, melt butter with the lemon zest. Turn off the heat. Add the buttermilk to the melted butter and let sit for 1 or 2 minutes. Add eggs and vanilla to butter and mix well.

2. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients. Pour the butter mixture into the well and stir gently. Mix only until there are no more streaks of flour or pools of liquid and the batter looks fairly smooth. Gently fold in berries until evenly distributed.

3. Divide batter evenly among muffin cups. Sprinkle remaining sugar over the tops of the muffins.

4. Bake for 18-20 minutes, until the tops feel firm and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

awkward laughs and big hair...

Snickerdoodle Cupcakes and Strawberry Cupcakes

I have mixed feelings regarding Martha Stewart. Don't get me wrong, she is a talented woman no doubt with booming enterprise spreading across North America... but whenever I make her food I always feel that the finished product is lacking in... something. After I spent some quality time with Martha and her cupcakes this weekend I realized what it was about her recipes that always just got to me: they have forced personality. I made snickerdoodle cupcakes and they tasted like a forced laugh that was almost awkwardly loud at a joke that's barely funny. The strawberry cupcakes that I made immediately following the snickerdoodle ones were small blonde girls with big hair just trying to keep up... for all that build-up there's not much goin' on.

After making more than a handful of Martha's recipes from both her cupcake book and her general cooking book, I've come to the conclusion that her recipes, while tasty, are lacking in any kind of oomph. I will concede to Martha that her recipes are very accessable for the "average home cook", but for me they have become dependable to the point of (gasp!) predictability. What I'm saying (in far too many words) is that when this food hits your palate, your eyes don't roll into the back of your head, your mouth doesn't drop open from shocked delight, and you make no noise that in any way shape or form can be described as orgasmic (in most western countries anyway!).

And yet...

And yet I love her great big book that describes the ins and outs of cooking to a perfect T. It's from this book that I've learned any technique that I claim to posess (with, I must admit, a few important exceptions). And in a way, I also like how she takes typically complex dishes and cuisine and simplifies it until it's manageable in a more day-to-day kind of way. HOWEVER, I must also say that this is, at the same time, what drives me nuts about her as well. I get a weird kind of thrill when I accomplish a dish that takes hours of careful preperation and perfect techniqe to pull off, only to be devoured in minutes (or in some cases, seconds). I much prefer that to cupcakes that take minutes to throw together and then loiter around the house for days like a European relative that doesn't speak any english.

Making cupcakes can be fun. They are cute and manageable and popular. They can be moist and decadent and a perfect addition to 5:00 am tea for a gaggle of nurses on the night shift (as mine were for), but these particular cupcakes turned out just about as boring and uninteresting as Martha herself (in my own humble opinion). It's entirely possible, however, that I am just bitter at these cuppies because for the first time ever (EVER!) my swiss meringue buttercream curdled when I added the butter. I'm thinking it's because I left the cold butter in the sun to get it to the proper "room temperature", but it passed that stage and went right on to "melted". How disappointing is that?!

So all in all, Martha's snickerdoodle and strawberry cupcakes can be described in one word: edible.