Snicker your doodle a muffin
There are people who do not care for chocolate. I know, I know…it is hard to comprehend, but I’ve heard stories on the internets and I’ve been told that they’re for reals. Those people have suffered long enough and they too deserve special treats that scream love from their flavorful, buttery crumbles. So if you happen to know of one of those people I suggest you bake them up a pile of snickerdoodle muffins…because they are so delightful that I cannot believe I wasted 46 years before I ate one.
I wish I could take credit for this amazing discovery but sadly no, it came from the genius Peabody, and I’m sure she’ll be nominated for a Nobel culinary prize or something for her astounding invention. I’ll admit that while I loved the concept of the muffin I wasn’t crazy about the recipe itself, mostly because it involved a mixer and a creaming technique with the butter and sugar. I generally think of muffins to be a type of quickbread that is formed from melted butter, egg, and milk combined with the dry ingredients and then quickly stirred. So I made some changes and came up with this recipe:
Snickerdoodle Muffins
printer-friendly recipe
2 cups flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cinnamon
Preheat oven to 375°F. Either butter a 12 cup muffin tin or use paper muffin cups.
Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. In another bowl combine the melted butter, sugar, eggs, milk, and vanilla. Stir until combined. Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry and mix lightly with a fork.
Fill the muffin cups with batter. Top each muffin with the cinnamon/sugar mixture…it can be applied heavily.
Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted into a muffin comes out clean.
I know…isn’t that beeauuutiiifffulll? So simple, easy, and so damn good. These muffins taste just like a snickerdoodle, tangy, sweet, cinnamony pleasure…perfect to serve to your true-love for breakfast on Valentine’s Day. Oh, and if you happen to be like me and have fallen hopelessly in love with Uno the Beagle…then bake them for your other true-love…humans will love these muffins, dogs not so much. BTW…my muffins are really yellow because the egg yolks were practically orange…pretty, huh!
Monday night blues buster…udon
Another frigid evening with the forecast for more snow…today I saw dump trucks and end loaders all over town clearing out old snow to make room for new. What’s a girl to do? Hop a jet to a warmer climate…nah, that’s not my speed. I just head into the kitchen and crank out some kick-ass soup in under 10 minutes.
I made chicken stock a few weeks ago and stashed it in the freezer and today seemed like a good day for the healing hand of a good bowl of soup. While the udon cooked, I heated up the stock with some added fresh ginger and a garlic clove. The rest was easy, rehydrated woodear mushrooms, napa cabbage, and ham all cut into thin strips, and a couple of green onions sliced. I added a dash of soy sauce, sesame oil , and chili oil to the stock and it was ready. Although you can’t tell by the picture I did arrange the noodles in a nice bundle with the cabbage, woodear, and ham snuggled up next to them and then drowned it all in the best broth…ever.
Pasta carbonara
Thanks for all the get well wishes. This head-cold continues to kick my butt and make life miserable. It’s times like this that I truly appreciate simple food like pasta carbonara. Authentic carbonara should be made with guanciale, a pork cheek that is rubbed with salt and pepper and cured for three weeks. But since I don’t have guanciale, nor do I have pancetta, I made do with 1/4 lb. of delicious bacon…not authentic, but tasty nonetheless. An egg, some grated parmesan, freshly ground black pepper, a pound of pasta, and a splash of pasta water round out the ingredients.
Put your pasta water on to boil, make sure you salt it really, really, well…I bet I use 2 -3 tablespoons. Dice the bacon and put it in a skillet over medium low heat. Once the bacon is done remove it from the pan. Grate about a cup of parmesan and set it aside. Once your pasta of choice is done, drain it, but make sure you reserve a cup of the pasta water. I usually make this with linguine, but this time I used penne, another of my favorite pasta shapes.
Dump the drained pasta into a large bowl, toss in the bacon and cheese, crack an egg over it all and add a substantial slosh of pasta water. Stir/toss it all together, grind black pepper over it all and mix it up again. That’s it. Bowl it up and head back to the couch to eat this lovely, velvety delight while watching The Daily Show on tivo…well at least that’s what I did.
BTW…if you think that perhaps I made a mistake and left the cream out, you’re wrong. Carbonara doesn’t have cream in it. Also, I think that carbonara has a bad reputation for being heavy and rich. Actually the opposite is true…it’s delicate and light and one egg and 4 ounces of bacon served to 4 people is hardly gluttonous. So don’t shun carbonara….embrace it!
Head over to Accidental Hedonist and check out my chocolate, caramel, toffee tart. I couldn’t have made it without the assistance of my sous chef, Dexter.
