So today I'm having a "high achievement in the home" day... It's 9am and I've fed the baby, ate breakfast, put baby back down for nap, done a load of dishes or two, and made a batch of pumpkin muffins, which are cooking in the oven and smell devine. I only just changed out of my nighty, but that's beside the point!
Being a mostly at home gal these days, it makes good economic sense to bake a bit more instead of buying snacks. C-chan needs snacks to maintain swimming 3 times a week to keep his back strong, and I need snacks to fuel my 10,000+ steps a day habit and the fact that I'm a part time human milk machine*. On top of that, most store bought snacks are full of sugar, ingredients you can't pronounce, and unnecessary packaging. The downside is that you just have to eat a bit when they are fresh out of the oven. And possibly a bit more.
Backtrack a paragraph or two... did I write pumpkin muffins? Oh yes! Anyone who's had a North American make Pumpkin Pie for them will understand what I mean... Pumpkin is a nice sweet flavouring and goes great with cinnamon and cloves. My local icecreamery used to make a pumpkin pie flavour, but stopped probably because C-chan, Angel and I were the only ones who ever bought it. Also, when in Tokyo a few years ago, C-chan and I went out for dinner on our wedding anniversary to a modern Japanese/French fusion restaurant highly recommended by My Brother the Expat. For dessert, we were served a few slithers of sweet pumpkin sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. Sure, we could have made that at home, but we probably wouldn't have thought of it.
But I digress. Muffins rock I have decided. Blueberry, pumpkin, date & oatbran... Mmmm. I used to use my dear old departed Granny's recipe, but I have recently converted to the Woomen's Weakly recipe book style, which uses a secret ingredient guaranteed to make your muffins moist for days**: buttermilk! Who would have thought this humble*** old-fashioned ingredient would make such a difference?!
* did I ever update you on the fact that E-chan finally got his breastfeeding attachment sorted out? about a week after deciding to wean, he decided he was into this breastfeeding thing. I now supply 1/3-1/2 of his dietary needs, with the rest being provided by formula. I figure it saves us a bit in formula costs, and gives him some of my immunity to colds etc., so might as well keep it up for a bit longer.
** that almost sounds rude!
*** actually, modern buttermilk doesn't seem to be the liquid squeezed out during the butter churning process as demonstrated during my childhood visits to Ye Olde Worlde Village... just checked the carton and ingredients seem to be: skim milk, milk, concentrated skim milk, culture. What the culture is I don't know, but assume it is more along the lines of yoghurt culture rather than forcing the milk to listen to Mozart and Beethoven style of culture
3 comments:
HI there, did you see in today's news that "muffin top" has made it to the Macquarie Australian dictionary? Its the bit of extra belly that rides over the top of one's tracksuit pants, as coined by Kimmy..
Oh goddess, I so suffer from muffin toppage. Bring back waited pants I say.
As for moist and cultured mufffins - bring them on! Will there be such fare at any future picnics you may have????
I "suffer" from muffin toppage too, due to a certain stretching of my stomach over the past year. And yes - I reckon we might be able to make some muffins for a certain picnic!
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