When In Doubt, Get Baked And Bake, Pt. 9,723...Chocolate-Banana Muffin Edition
Aaaaaaaaaand yes, it's been a bit much this whole week, and it's only Wednesday. Thus, after perusing the morning's headlines, I decided to partake of roomie's gift of "probably the most potent Durban Poison you've ever had" and use it as I always do: not as an "escape", but as a "meditation".
There is a kind of totally immersive "being-here-now-presence" that is required with baking, and over the years, many of the "precision measurement" aspects become a matter of habit. Once those ingredient relationships are ingrained in your being, there is a certain playfulness that comes into play, so to speak.
I had three totally brown bananas and I wasn't gonna let 'em go to waste. We have enough "bread" to last awhile, and roomie said he liked chocolate muffins, so I settled on Chocolate-Banana Muffins.
Tall Bois, yah. Sorta made this one up as I went along, combining different aspects of different recipes. It seems to have worked. ;-)
The secret to working with cocoa powder, I'm finding, is using enough moisture/liquid to keep the finished product from being dry. It's easier to find the balance if you've made hundreds of batches of batter, of course, but once you begin to get a feel for how much of each ingredient you have to adjust to get a killer finished product, it builds your confidence for the next adventure.
I approach it like a meditation, the same way I approach making my morning carafe of coffee. Something about it, besides anticipation, requires total focus, and that's how it helps with re-centering.
Whereas in the morning, my focus is on how much boiled water is in the Melitta cone at any given second, stirring it gently, watching the grounds develop and the various colors of foam, how the foam rotates as the coffee does. In 15 minutes, it's done, and I'm at least present for the first cup. Before I look at Today's Bad News.
With baking, it's much the same, only watching whatever batter I'm making or dough I'm kneading develop. The correct outcomes at the various stages affirm you are doing it right and point to the next step.
It also builds confidence in knowing whatever you're baking will turn out "right", with the "right" flavor and the "right" texture for whatever it is. Muffins walk a fine line between being a fluffy cupcake or a dense hockey-puck affair. Not enough liquid, they'll be dry. Too much, and they'll puff up and wilt and die a pitiful death. Lately I've gone back to using buttermilk for most things, and it always enhances whatever good result ends up happening.
Knowing the right ingredient ratios/amounts/chemical-relationships helps you extrapolate for however much/many changes would have to be made to make a batch as consistent as the original, but expanded to any size.
To bake what I baked today:
12 Chocolate-Banana Muffins
1 stick plus 3 Tablespoons salted butter, softened to room temp
Buttermilk (approx 2 1/2 cups) room temp
1 teaspoon fine grain salt
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2/3 cup cocoa powder (natural--the cheap kind)
4 teaspoons plus 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Line muffin pans with parchment cups.
In stand mixer bowl, put softened butter, both sugars, the cocoa powder, the baking powder, salt, and vanilla extract.
Mix on first speed until consistently dark and fluffy.
In a 4-cup Pyrex measure, pour in 1/2 cup of olive oil, next crack in the two eggs, and then add the mushed bananas, and pour in enough buttermilk to make it all come up to the 3-cup mark.
Take a stick blender or a mixer and basically homogenize the eggs, buttermilk and oil into a consistent emulsion. Once the butter mixture in the stand mixer is ready, leave on lowest speed and begin pouring the liquids from the Pyrex into the mixer bowl.
Pour slowly enough that you don't overwhelm the batter and make chunks and slosh. Pour your liquids slowly and intermittently until your resulting batter is smooth before you pour again.
Once you're there, let beat on speed two for a minute or so, then put the speed back down and begin spooning the flour in as it mixes, about a cup at a time, until all 3 cups are incorporated. You should have an exquisitely THICK batter that looks like pure liquid chocolate.
Fill the muffin cups to the brim, as deep as the pan is plus a little, and top with about 2 tablespoons of coarse sugar crystals per muffin.
Into the oven at 400 for 24-25 minutes. Remove from oven, allow to cool in pans for about 15 minutes, then remove to cool on rack rest of the way. If you have no air-tight storage, and you don't have a "cake bell", you can improvise one: you can invert a Pyrex bowl over them on the counter (about 4 or 5 will fit until a large bowl). They'll keep and stay moist on the counterop for a week, if you keep them covered...and if they don't get eaten!
I've probably baked several hundred batches of all manner of muffins in these two thick, cast-aluminum muffin pans from an ancient Wear-Ever commercial baking rack. I used to use the foil cups, until Reynolds decided to stop making them, now I use the parchment with a whole-hearted two thumbs up. Sometimes it takes hittin' ya upside the head to get it to sink in.
And the kitchen's still spotless. That's part of it for me. I clean as I go. I don't let things build up. There is enough lee-way in the timing of the procedures to get things washed, rinsed, and into the drainer with the same kind of meditative mindfulness I do most things that require presence of attention and focus. It is possible for the cooking/baking and the cleanup to be the partners in a dance that complements both very necessary things.
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