Quality ingredients make muffins healthy, but not lowfat

 I once worked in a newsroom where we were treated to pastries and doughnuts whenever we met a really grueling deadline. The publisher traveled across the city to grab doughnuts that had just come from the deep fryer, and we broke out the advertising department’s much newer and cleaner coffee pot to make an improved version of the sludge that passed as newsroom coffee. As my co-workers dropped powdered sugar on their shirt fronts and wiped off the jelly spurting from fat jelly doughnuts, I virtuously nibbled on a whole-grain muffin, trying, as someone who writes about food and health, to set a good example for all. 

The trouble is, I was wrong. The cranberry-orange muffin I felt so smug about had 480 calories, many of them from fat, while the chocolate glazed doughnuts the reporters loved were a mere 290 calories, with less fat. True, I was a little ahead in the vitamin and fiber department, but not by much.

As shocking as this news was to me, I was able to put it to good use when my already painfully skinny children went through amazing growth spurts at the same time they decided to become cross-country runners for their high school teams. Their legs in their nylon shorts reminded me of the python who swallowed a pig, their knees appearing even larger because their legs were so thin. It was a matter of great concern to me that they chronically overslept, forgetting breakfast and running directly from their beds to the bus stop or into the disreputable looking cars of fellow students old enough to drive.

That’s when I invested in a couple of jumbo muffin pans and set about trying to cram every bit of cereal, whole grains, nuts and fruits into the six giant muffins I made every morning for Jesse and Grace to grab as they ran out the door. It was fun because, unlike cooking for adults, calories were no problem. Extra honey and butter, oatmeal, eggs, vegetable oil, coconut, walnuts, fruit, jam, even chocolate went into those muffins, and by night time all of them were gone, which was good because most adults have no business eating anything that delivers 600 calories in a few bites. I felt good knowing I’d at least made an honest attempt at filling the amazing calorie demands of anyone who runs eight miles a day and grows an inch every month.

When the kids were grown and gone, I experimented with making lower-calorie muffins, removing fat, replacing butter with healthier fat, adding berries and using artificial sweetener. Low-fat muffins are just not the same: the outside gets crusty and the inside tastes dry.  For years, I tried to avoid them, but they remained my favorite breakfast.

Recently, I talked to my sister and we both agreed that muffins seem to keep us full until lunch, something not true of dry cereal with milk. Barb pointed out that it was the fat itself – along with the fiber and protein from whole grains and nuts – that make muffins slower to digest, something I certainly should have realized.  These days, I just make smaller muffins, try to make them as healthy as possible, and just enjoy them as perfect little packages of fiber, grain, and fruit, a breakfast to look forward to rather than simply endure.

Barb and I both love the bran, blueberry and molasses muffins our mother used to make, from a recipe that was given her by a dear friend.  Two recipes follow for bran muffins, and both are delicious and cost pennies to make.

Quick muffin pointers: 

Generally, the thinner the batter, the more cake-like and delicate the muffins will be; and a really thick batter will be dense and moist.

Although recipes are full of dire warnings about over-filling muffin cups, I don’t worry about it. I fill the pans to the top. Muffins look better when they’re plump and rounded. 

Stir the wet into the dry ingredients for muffins well, or you’ll have little pockets of flour or baking powder, just don’t overdo it. Don’t use an electric mixer, since beating the batter will make it tough. 

Sometimes muffin recipes will have you mix dried milk with the dry ingredients and use water instead of milk for the liquid. Buttermilk adds flavor and moistness to muffins, and you can also use powdered buttermilk in the same way. Usually, recipes calling for buttermilk will use baking soda.

I’ve tried muffin pans with paper liners and well-greased muffin pans and really prefer the pans without the liners, as muffins tend to get a little soggy as they sit in the cups. Spray-on oil works fine, or you can save butter wrappers to grease your muffin pans. 

There are a lot of theories about how to get a perfectly shaped muffin, including leaving the top half of the cup ungreased, making it easier for the batter to climb higher. In my experience, really thick batters end up looking better because their thickness prevents them from spreading out over the top of the pan too much.

If you end up with too little batter for the number of cups in your pan, put a little water in the cups to keep the greased surfaces from scorching in the oven. 

Muffins with lots of grains and fruits keep very well. Wholegrain muffins freeze well and can be defrosted (carefully) in the microwave. 

If you can’t find bran, process some all-bran cereal into the food processor until it reaches the consistency of dry oatmeal. 

Barbara Heisey’s bran and blueberry muffins 

3 cups natural bran

2 cups whole wheat flour

½ cup sugar

1 Tbsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

2 eggs, beaten

2 cups buttermilk

1/3 cup canola oil

½ cup molasses

12 oz bag frozen blueberries 

Preheat oven to 375 and grease enough muffin pans to make 24 muffins.

Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl. In a smaller bowl, beat eggs slightly, adding remaining ingredients except blueberries. Add to dry ingredients and stir just until moistened. Fold in frozen blueberries and divide among muffin pans.

Bake approximately 20 minutes. These freeze very well after cooling. 

Bran, blueberry and dried cherry muffins

Remember to start these the night before. 

2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour   

4 1/2 teaspoons baking soda 

1 tablespoon baking powder 

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 

1/8 teaspoon table salt 

3/4 cup vegetable oil 

2 teaspoons honey 

1/4 cup molasses 

1 cup light brown sugar plus 2 tablespoons, tightly packed

1 teaspoon vanilla extract 

3 large eggs, lightly beaten

2 cups buttermilk  (or 2 cups lowfat milk with 1 teaspoon vinegar)

2 cups wheat bran (or 2 cups 100 % bran cereal, processed in food processor until the consistency of oatmeal)

1/2 cup dried cherries (or use raisins, dried cranberries or dates)

1 cup frozen blueberries 

 Whisk first five ingredients together in a bowl; set aside. 

In a large bowl, whisk oil, honey, molasses, brown sugar and vanilla together. Whisk in eggs, then buttermilk and bran. Let bran soften for 20 minutes before continuing. 

Whisk dry ingredients into wet mixture to partially blend. Continue mixing batter so ingredients at the bottom are well incorporated into the batter. Fold in cherries and blueberries.Cover batter with plastic wrap and refrigerate, preferably overnight.

Heat oven to 400 degrees and put rack in the middle. Grease 2 12-cup muffin pans or 2 6-cup jumbo muffin pans. Fill to the top of the cups. Bake until muffin tops brown 20-30 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees if muffins take longer than 20 minutes to bake. Let muffins cool in pan for 5 minutes, then transfer them to a wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature. These keep well and freeze very well. 

Use fresh turnips if you can find them

People all over the world serve them, but they get little respect here. Turnips store well, and have lots of vitamin A and C. They’re low in calories, cheap, easy to cook and have a pleasant bite, a little like a radish. Most Virginia turnips have been pulled before the ground freezes, so it may be too late to take advantage of the greens, but the white roots with purple tops (there are also pure white turnips) are sold everywhere. Their appeal to our frugal ancestors is the same reason they’re well-suited for meals today.

Fix your turnips by scrubbing well (if someone gave you a pair of those rough exfoliating gloves for Christmas, this is a good use for them). Most recipes say to peel them, but I get my turnips from the gardens of John’s relatives and they’re fresh and tender, so I skip this step. If yours seem a little tough, use a regular carrot peeler to remove the skin.  There are many ways to fix them, so take your pick.

• Mash them, either alone or with potatoes. They retain more water than potatoes, so drain well. I put them back in the hot pot once they’re drained and shake them until they’re very dry. This helps keep the dish fluffy instead of soup, and also makes sure the vegetables will absorb the butter and milk when they’re mashed.
• Roast them in the oven with other root vegetables like carrots and onions. First toss with olive oil, rosemary and salt.
• Simmer them with carrots, potatoes and onions in chicken stock or water and serve as a side dish. They’re a classic served this way with corned beef and cabbage. Use the water from simmering the corned beef after skimming the fat.
• Layer them with cabbage or potatoes in an oven-proof dish, after first slicing  and sauteeing them. Season with cream and butter, top with bread crumbs and bake until the top browns and all are tender.
• Substitute turnips for mashed potatoes and save hundreds of calories. Skip the butter, use skim milk, and simmer in chicken stock for flavor.
• Rodney Phillips serves them with thick pork chops: he fries the chops, removes the bone, adds the meat to a pot of cooked and drained turnips with a little salt and sugar, then reheats them slowly to let the meat flavor the vegetables. 

A Rooster at Sunrise Farms

When the farmers markets close, I head to Sunrise Farm in Stuarts Draft, and pick out a chicken that’s spent its days uncaged and feasting on untreated feed. it’s hard to find good-sized chickens in the stores: Sunrise allows its birds to get to roasting size, where they have the best flavor and color.  At $2.99 a pound, a 7-pound bird is not cheap, but it’s far less expensive than buying boneless, skinless chicken breasts (unless you hit this sale at Kroger real quick).  At Sunrise, the whole bird beats the parts for price. If you’ve never cut up a chicken, take a look at Chef John as he cuts up a chicken with scissors. Anyone can do it, and if you go by general grocery store prices, the cost of a whole chicken (Usually about $9) certainly beats the price of the cut up parts, at about $15.

Don’t have time to cut it up? Wash it off, dry it and sprinkle on some salt and pepper. Put it in a crockpot and cook it on low heat for 8 hours or so. The breast meat will be tender without drying out, and the thighs and legs will be juicy and cooked through. I often put a bed of sliced onions and celery down so the skin won’t stick, and I sometimes add a tablespoonful of pickling spices tied in cheescloth.

While you’re at Sunrise, order a holiday ham, cured without all the chemicals found in storebought ham, or get on the list for a fresh turkey. Sunrise Farms is unique in that it’s run on the honor system: you take what you need from the freezer or refrigerator, and put your money in a box. I used to worry that someone would clean them out,  but one of helpers told me they have never come up short.

I also found out that even pears grown for eating out of hand are allowed to ripen off the tree. This eliminates the grainy texture that many people don’t like in pears, and also prevents the fruit from being bruised by falling once it gets ripe and soft. I didn’t know which kind I had, so while they were still hard, I cooked them according to a recipe I found at Cottage Smallholder, a delightful blog.

The recipe calls only for wine vinegar, sugar and hard pears, which are peeled but not stemmed or cored. Once peeled, the pears were smooth and perfect. I used sherry vinegar since I have an abundance of it. The pears and the syrup both tasted wonderful — delicate, exotic and very sweet. The rest of the pears are getting a little softer, so I may choose the biggest and prettiest to eat as it.

Linda Weaver of Simpy Cheddar

I was glad to see Linda Weaver of Simply Cheddar at the Waynesboro Farmers Market today. When she started, Linda’s business was very small,  20or so cheese balls a week made in her Waynesboro home. She now supplies hundreds of her pure cheddar cheese balls to gourmet retailers, wine shops and farmers markets across Virginia. Her secret is simple and she readily shares it: she uses only cheddar — two different kinds — in her wonderful and attractive cheese balls. If you’re tired of spreading a chunk of a cheeseball on a cracker and tasting only sour cream or cream cheese, the pure, nutty taste of Linda’s handmade creations will please you. You can find her outlets or place your order on her website.

I’ve made it so often in the past few weeks that I don’t measure any more – if I have extra cucumbers, I just use more of them for a paler gazpacho, and we’ve been short of peppers from the garden, so I often skip them.  I had some leftover stale Italian bread, so I added that to the food processor one night; I’ve also made it without bread crumbs.  I just put three cored tomatoes, a peeled clove of garlic, and three peeled cucumbers in the food processor or blender, add olive oil and sherry vinegar, and blend until everything is smooth. Sometimes I put a little extra sherry vinegar on top, then grind the salt and pepper just before serving.

Sometimes I put in a little sweet onion, sometimes not.  Gazpacho is best when there are a few chopped vegetables to serve on top, as it makes the texture more interesting. Add sea salt and fresh ground pepper to finish.

Grace also had some leftover mozzarella sticks that serve as snacks for her hungry nephews, and decided to use them as one layer for her grilled vegetable stacks. She sliced the vegetables, coated them with olive oil and fresh herbs, and grilled them until the edges were brown. Sausages went on the fire, too, until they were well marked by the grill and cooked all the way through. She split the baguettes, sliced the string cheese on top, piled on the vegetable slices, with huge raw tomato slices on top. One baguette half got a layer of halved sausage links as well, and Grace drizzled olive oil and sprinkled sea salt and fresh ground pepper on top. Everything went under the broiler until the cheese melted, and then Grace tucked whole basil leaves under the tomato slices at strategic points. She cut the loaves into small wedges to serve.

The grilled vegetables had so much flavor that the sausage wasn’t missed on the vegetarian loaf; and the string cheese – though not as good as high-quality mozzarella when it’s the main feature – did fine here as an anchor. Grace served her summer sandwiches with a potato salad using tiny “La Ratte” fingerling potatoes, tossed with olive oil, onion, cider vinegar and a little mustard. Adrina arrived with tiny broccolis florets she steamed and tossed with lemon, and a watermelon from Che’s garden, to complete our wonderful late-night feast. Mike contributed a bottle of dry Riesling , a perfect companion that stood up well to the flavors of tomatoes and smoke.

How to tell when a watermelon is ripe? It’s not always easy, but most watermelon farmers tell by the tone. Remember the best melons you’ve eaten? They’re the ones with dark color, a really dense texture and no gaps or holes in the flesh. A melon like this rings when it’s slapped, unlike the soggy, mushy melon that gives out a dull thud.

So find a melon, slap it, haul it home and follow Chef Mike’s cutting guidelines for easy slicing. Foodies these days are posting recipes and gorgeous photos of watermelon salad, an interesting pairing of salty cheese and sweet melon cubes. I had my favorite version at the home of Karen Asaro of Sandbridge, an “Everyday Chef” who was featured in the Virginian-Pilot last year.

Karen is a wonderful and generous cook. She made a traditional July 4th meal with barbecued ribs, baked beans, cornbread and cole slaw. She managed to produce a potato salad with red, white and blue potatoes and a cobbler with white batter, blueberries and strawberries, so we definitely stayed within a patriotic theme. Best of all was the watermelon-feta salad. Karen’s salad features mint, lemon juice and basil. These strong and distinctive tastes – minty, citrusy and pungent — really help pull the fresh sweet taste of watermelon, the bitter arugula and the salty cheese together. It’s important to use fresh lemon juice, and watercress can be substituted for the arugula. I have also used cotija, a kind of salty Mexican cheese and added a little cilantro, with lime juice replacing the lemon.

Karen’s recipe follows.

Watermelon-Feta Salad

6 cups cubed seedless watermelon
2 cups baby arugula
4 ounces crumbled feta
¼ cup thinly sliced fresh basil
3 tablespoons thinly sliced fresh mint
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
¼ teaspoon salt

Place all ingredients in a large bowl, toss gently to combine. Serve immediately.

A good use for large cucumbers

At Wades Mill in Raphine, I watched George Huger, chef and owner of The Southern Inn, turn some oversize cucumbers into a smooth, refreshing summer soup. George, a wonderful teacher, peeled a dozen or so cucumbers, seeded them, and whirled them with a plunge mixer, along with a huge pile of cleaned and torn dill weed. He added sour cream in huge dollops and a little buttermilk to thin it enough to serve in soup bowls, a creamy, tangy soup. I had two bowls of it out on the front lawn and would have had more if there hadn’t been many courses to come. The dill is important, George said — he used a huge clamshell package of it — and so is taking out the seeds. Cucumber seeds are suspended in a watery gel that will make your soup thin if it all gets whirled in with the firmer flesh. We also had pate, crabcakes, roasted corn and tomato relish, cracked wheat salad and a gorgeous shortcake, the last two made under the direction of Georgie Young, the innkeeper’s wife, out of grains from the mill.

I used Greek yogurt instead of sour cream, and fat-free buttermilk, the only kind I could find in the store. My soup was okay, but not as good as George’s. A chef told me that a little fat is important in any kind of emulsified mixture, for complicated chemical reasons as well as for flavor. I tried again, adding a little garlic. I used my food processor for the cucumbers and added mostly Greek yogurt, with a little regular buttermilk near the end. Much better.

It’s a special occasion when Chef Huger comes to Wades Mill, but the other cooking classes there are pretty special, too. Saturday’s class will use food from the Staunton farmers market and the Young’s Raphine garden.

For those who need a recipe:

(This soup, minus the dill, and with no buttermilk to thin it, makes the refreshing raita that accompanies Indian curries)

Chilled Cucumber Soup

4 cucumbers

2 garlic cloves, peeled

1/2 cup snipped fresh dill

1 quart Greek yogurt

Salt and pepper to taste

Dill springs

Buttermilk to thin

Peel cucumbers, cut in half, scoop out seeds and cut in chunks. With motor running, drop the garlic down the feed tube and process until finely chopped. It will tend to stick to the sides — just stop the food processor and push it back down to the blade. Add cucumbers and process with short pulses until they are very finely chopped but not pureed. Put in a b owl, add yogurt and dill, thin to taste with buttermilk, season with salt and pepper and chill.

When I’m in Culpeper, I always stop and see Jessica at the Raven’s Nest Coffee House on Davis Street. She’s a wonderful cook, and makes baked goods, soups and breakfast and lunch specials from scratch, using fresh produce in season from the Culpeper Farmers Market. I worked there all day using the fast internet connection between my travels in different directions and had a delicious tomato-mozzarella salad (caprese) and a very nice chicken salad with grapes, both with a hard, crusty roll. She gave me a taste of her mint lemonade, a real treat on a hot, dusty July day. Jessica said she also makes lemonade with rosemary or thyme, but the fresh mint was delicious. To make it, Jessica chops mint leaves finely, adds sugar, covers everything with an inch or so of boiling water, then adds the juice of 2 lemons or so for a quart, then cools it down with cold water and lets it steep in the refrigerator until it’s ready to pour. Davis Street, one of the city’s two main streets, has become a culinary center – more on that later.