About a year or so ago I learned a new skill to my sort of usual routine of things in my life, it was baking. The picture above is of a loaf of bread I baked tonight, the picture quality isn’t great but the bread turned out very nice. I started baking muffins before I tried baking bread, I found a recipe online and it was easier and much much cheaper than I thought it would be to bake them. With a base recipe for the muffin mix it is easy to make all sorts of different kinds of muffins depending on what extra ingredients I add to my monthly grocery shop. See the base recipe below…
- 1 and a quarter cup of flour
- 3 teaspoons of baking powder
- a third of a cup of sugar
- a half a teaspoon of salt
- 1 cup of milk
- 1 egg
- a quarter cup of oil
Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl and the wet ingredients in another bowl, then combine the wet and dry ingredients, then mix with a spoon or whatever. You may want to add some more flour at this point if the batter seems to runny, after a few times baking muffins you will be able to feel the right consistency and make adjustments as needed.
Now is the part where you can add extra ingredients for flavor, some options I have tried are…
Add a cup of bran cereal to the wet ingredients mix and let it soak for a few minutes before combining with the dry ingredients. That’s how you can make bran muffin batter.
I also really like dried cranberries, about a cup in the batter, if you have vanilla extract about a tablespoon is really good also. If you have oranges don’t throw out your orange peels, keep them in a container in your fridge and then when making muffins give the peels a good wash and very finely chop and dice the orange peel, about a quarter cup makes the batter orange flavored, that with cranberries is great or you could put about a cup of chocolate chips instead of cranberries in the batter and you got orange and chocolate chip muffins.
And so, with a base recipe of 7 ingredients you can make whatever kind of muffins you can think of, the above are some suggestions I have tried, but go whatever way you can imagine with whatever your favorite flavors are to make the batter, then just bake in the oven for about 20 minutes at 400 degrees, you can line the muffin tin with paper cupcake cups, I find it better to bake them right in the muffin tin but grease the cups up with some oil or margarine. When they are getting golden and a bit crisp on top they should be done. Let them cool for at least 10 minutes.
I have really enjoyed baking my own muffins and it is a huge money saver also, at the grocery stores where I live it is about 6 dollars for a 6 pack of muffins, the recipe above will make at least 6 muffins if not more and of course it depends on the extra ingredients you use but it costs me maybe 75 cents to make a batch, so big savings. And you will see that with baking supplies if you buy larger amounts you can save even more so rather than a 5 pound bag compare the price of a 10 pound bag of flour, also powdered milk is way cheaper than fresh milk and it lasts way longer than fresh milk and it works just as good, etc.
And then those ingredients to make muffins can also be used to make things such as pancake batter, bannock, and a really good bread, like the loaf in the picture at the top of the post…
I’ll post a recipe for bread at some point in the future in the meantime instead of a picture of muffins I baked, which I don’t have at the time of writing this, I used the new AI image creator https://designer.microsoft.com/ and in the prompt line typed “a muffin” the below image is what it created, no it isn’t a picture of a real muffin despite being realistically beautiful.
Then I used the prompt “a muffin AI would create” and it created the image below, I call it Wondermuffin, it clearly thinks very highly of it itself…or hmmmm?
It’s a very cool new tool if you haven’t checked it out yet. And so have a great day, thank you very much, I hope you give baking a try.
Addition: below are some just taken pictures of some just baked bread and muffins. The muffins are applesauce cranberry with lots of vanilla and some brown sugar as the favours using the same base recipe above. The bread is a soda bread and the recipe is 2 cups of flour, 3/4 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 1 cup of butter milk, 3 tablespoons of margarine (melted). If you don’t have butter milk add 1 tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice to the milk and let it sit for at least 10 minutes and use that instead. Then dry ingredients in one bowl and wet ingredients in another, then mix them together, and knead and knead and knead some more, you can let it rise and rest if you want but don’t need to, bake at 350 degrees at least 20 minutes but asses that yourself by the colour of the bread and how it feels, you will know.
