Muffins and Shortbread and Fall OH MY!

Ok so two things need to happen before I launch into BREAKFAST MUFFIN RECAP and MY FIRST ATTEMPT AT PROPER SHORTBREAD. 

1. HAPPY FIRST DAY OF FALL YESTERDAY, YOU GUYS! Fall makes me stupidly happy. It's full of all my favourite things - things like PUMPKINS and LEAVES and APPLES and FIREPLACE SMELLS and BAKING and HOCUS POCUS TV MARATHONS and SWEATERS. My run yesterday morning was full of woodsmoke and mist and leaf-crunch sidewalks and I happy-giggled the whole way through. So. HAPPY FALL EVERYONE! IT'S FINALLY HERE!

2. BEETLE BEDROOM RENOVATION UPDATE! I thought about giving you a bullet point rundown again, but decided that things have reached the stage where ACTUAL PHOTOGRAPHS are now appropriate. So . . . . virtual drumroll please . . . 

WHADDYA THINK???

Pretty nifty, huh? 

Obviously this is why I haven't posted all week. Because every morning I run, have coffee, put on my painting clothes, and spend the next 10 hours listening to Philippa Gregory audio books and flinging a paintbrush around. It's THE BEST THING EVER. I'm actually secretly going to be bummed when it's over because painting is incredibly therapeutic. Though maybe that's just the fumes talking. 

One of my friends commented that this is TARDIS BLUE. Which. HAPPY DANCE. 

However, dear reader, I do not mean to neglect you. And so I shall now share a few baking exploits from the weekend. Ahem.

One of my favourite things about living in Manhattan was the ready availability of pretty much every magazine known to human kind. On my way back from yoga in Union Square, I could stop in at the Pakistani-run news bodega on 17th street and feast my eyes upon an entire WALL of glossy British home design amazingness. I would buy all of them (no, literally all of them), go home, and dream of a kitchen chock full of hand thrown pottery, an Aga, a sub zero fridge hidden behind bespoke cabinets, a scrubbed wooden table reclaimed from an oak tree that was standing at the Battle of Bosworth Fields, and organic dish towels that were hand-loomed by a carbon-neutral convent of Buddhist nuns off the coast of Cornwall. Good use of $75? Yes, I think so.


But there were also COOKING magazines, and after Gourmet went away, there was nowhere left to turn but overseas. (Before you can ask, let me just say that after a lifetime of Gourmet, flipping through Bon Appetit its sort of like trying to follow a Downton Abby marathon with Alaska State Troopers.) The two magazines that saved my life in this difficult time are Donna Hay and BBC GoodFood.

I went on a muffin kick last month and started adding recipes to my files, and this is one that kept popping up. My Lovely Librarians, beautiful creatures that they are, are health conscious and like yummy yet good-for-you-food. Not that they won't happily take delivery of Death-by-Chocolate brownies, but for the most part their palates run towards the "crunchy" side of things. 

So my dear LLs, these are for you. 

BREAKFAST MUFFINS

(aka HEALTH MUFFINS, START YOUR MORNING RIGHT MUFFINS, MUFFINS THAT CONTAIN ONLY GOOD THINGS MUFFINS, YOU CAN EAT FOUR OF THESE FOR BREAKFAST MUFFINS, MUFFINS THAT HAVE NO BUTTER IN THEM SO UNLESS YOU USE NONSTICK MUFFIN CUPS THEY ARE GOING TO STICK TO THE PAPER SORRY ABOUT THAT YOU GUYS MUFFINS, etc.) 

These will get the super health stamp of approval from just about anyone. They have NO butter, NO sugar, and are made with yoghurt, applesauce, bananas, and honey. They are also packed full of oats, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, and chopped dates. They're like . . . really delicious vitamin pills.

Before I forget here is the recipe. May your conversions be accurate.

So pretty. So secretly unyielding on the bottoms . . . 

BEETLE NOTES

I might have hinted at their biggest issue in the title above, but . . . YOU GUYS I'M SORRY IT WAS A TOTALLY UNFORESEEN CONSEQUENCE AND HAD I KNOWN THE PAPER WAS GOING TO STICK TO THE BOTTOM I NEVER NEVER NEVER WOULD HAVE SENT THEM IN ON SATURDAY I AM SO SORRY IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN I PROMISE.

One of the things about not cooking with butter is . . . there's nothing to grease the pan or cup in question. It's a GOOD thing if you are trying to avoid saturated fat, but a BAD thing if you are counting on that butter making the removal of little paper jackets possible. I gotta be honest with you, dear reader, it never even occurred to me that this might be a problem. LIVE AND LEARN, EH BEETLE? LIVE AND LEARN. I seem to remember that somewhere out there there are special nonstick muffin cups? As soon as I can get my hands on them I intend to buy in bulk.

And again, let me say to my Lovely BEYOND Lovely Librarians . . .

ADDITIONAL BEETLE NOTES

There were a few substitutions here. I switched out blueberries in favour of chopped dates. My rolled oats were actually a 5-grain mix including triticale and flax, and because of that I only added sunflower and pumpkin seeds. I also used plain vegetable oil because rapeseed oil is something that the local Hannafords (shockingly) does not carry. I will include one side note to BBCGF (not that they will ever read this) that when you call for "one banana, mashed" you should specify how BIG you want that banana, because a) there are different sizes and b) if you are using pureed baby food instead of actual bananas, you have no idea how much to use. I went with 100g because that's what the applesauce measurement was . . . ? Eh? Seemed to work.

Final verdict: Good recipe! Healthy and yummy! Nonstick muffin cups are a good thing!

MOVING ON

It's gotten to the point in our house that when Mum has to resort to her emergency stash of chocolate biscuits, I feel an almost unbearable pang of guilt. In my mind at that point, I have FAILED as a daughter, resigning her to an evening of (gasp!) store bought dessert. The following is my remedy to that. And what I hoped at the time was a way of making up for a chocolate biscuit night the evening before.

SHORTBREAD (traditional wedge version) 

Note the telltale flakiness . . . now THAT'S shortbread

I don't know if you know this about me, but I have actually never made proper shortbread before. I KNOW, RIGHT? IT TOTALLY SEEMS LIKE SOMETHING I WOULD BE ALL OVER. Well, I never had. Until the other day. Allow me to make a Harry Potter reference and say: 

MISCHIEF MANAGED

I used Martha Stewart's recipe for Shortbread Wedges. I decided that since this was my first official crack at it, I would go the traditional route rather than cinnamon, peanut butter, oatmeal, chocolate chip, etc. Gotta walk before you can fly, dear reader. Or in this case, gotta cream butter before you can add powdered ginger.

BEETLE NOTES

I must say. The only thing "difficult" about this one is the chilling and baking time. Apart from that, it is the definition of easy peasy lemon squeezy. Three ingredients. In a pan. Done and DONE. You just have to budget for half an hour of chilling and almost an hour of baking. But if you are spending the entire day painting, and can run down sporadically to switch things from fridge to oven and set a timer so you don't burn the house down with you inside it, then it's totally not an issue. Also, shortbread smells AMAZING.

ps. Beetle tested. Mum approved. 

And guess what, you guys? NOW IT'S TIME FOR SHORTBREAD EXPERIMENTATION. It's going to involve COOKIE CUTTERS and JAM and CRYSTALLISED GINGER and CONFECTIONER'S SUGAR and GROUND ALMONDS AND HAZELNUTS and CURRENTS and . . . and . . . and . . .