Muffins

My favorite muffins are the Betty Crocker blueberry muffins you make from a mix. Yes, I’m sophisticated. With these muffins, however, I have two disappointments:

1. You can’t get the mix in Spain (unless you go to a special store and trade a human organ for it)
and
2. The box promises more muffins than it can deliver.

Heather makes bran muffins from scratch. She uses a whole box of bran cereal to make the batter, which means she always makes a huge batch at a time. I reckon one batch of batter lasts us a whole week. I like them best when they are warm. Yum.

The only down-side to Heather’s muffins: uh, Heather and the kids can tell you that.

The only place I know of here in Madrid where you can get a good muffin is at Starbucks. I rarely get one there, though, because of the inflated price, even though they are the size of a cantaloupe (I think they use muffin hormones).

In the States I also like the muffins at Perkins, which are also rather large.

If I started a muffin-making company I would coax people who have plenty o’ nuthin’ to buy my large muffins by calling my company Plenty o’ Muffin. I would want to be remembered as the maker of the largest muffins ever and instead of calling myself the CEO I would simply have people call me Stud Muffin.

Mmmmmm, muffins. I love muffins warm from the oven, with butter. Muffins aren’t very common in Spain, so either I have to make them, or go to Starbucks. Meg loves Starbucks muffins too. Every time she sees a Starbucks (which these days, is everywhere in Madrid!) she comments on how she loves their muffins. That is not a habit I intend to encourage.

But I digress. I most often make bran muffins, not because I need the bran (ahem) but because I have a super easy recipe that I can mix up and then keep in the fridge. The recipe says you can keep the batter in the fridge for six weeks. We don’t know if it’s true because ours is always long gone before then. I dig the recipe because it involves mixing and measuring only once. Then you can have a pan of hot muffins in about 20 minutes. Add some butter and honey, and you have yourself a spectacular breakfast (or ahem, way to stay regular.)

If I am trying to be healthy, I use mostly wheat flour in the muffins. If I don’t care that much, I load them up with raisins. Oh bliss.

I also really like blueberry, apple and chocolate chip muffins. And double chocolate. Actually I’m not sure if there is a muffin I don’t like. Unless they include nuts. I am violently opposed to nuts in baked goods. I love nuts, I just don’t want them in my carrot cake, muffins, or banana bread.