Okay... so the primary focus of this blog is going to be the adventure geocaching the state parks, but a fair warning that I am going to stick in a bit of other stories and humor... this is just a good example of one...
Since I am spending a lot more time at home in the near future, I really want to make some good choices for food for Marcus. One of things that Marcus enjoys is making blueberry muffins and, of course, eating them! For the longest time we just bought the mix where you just add milk or water.... They are fast, they are easy, they are inexpensive and they are yummy (and Marcus loves them)... but have you ever looked at the ingredients?.... I finally did one day (see below)... Look at the number of ingredients.... did you notice they don't actually have blueberries?
Ingredients:
ENRICHED FLOUR BLEACHED (WHEAT FLOUR, NIACIN, IRON, THIAMIN MONONITRATE, RIBOFLAVIN, FOLIC ACID), SUGAR, DEXTROSE, PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED SOYBEAN AND/OR COTTONSEED OILS, CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF: YELLOW CORN FLOUR, BAKING POWDER (BAKING SODA, SODIUM ALUMINUM PHOSPHATE), MODIFIED CORN STARCH, CALCIUM CARBONATE, SALT, EGGS WITH SODIUM SILICOALUMINATE ADDED AS ANTICAKING AGENT, MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDES, PROPYLENE GLYCOL MONOSTEARATE, CITRIC ACID, ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, POLYGLYCEROL, SODIUM STEAROYL LACTYLATE, COLORED WITH (BLUE 2 LAKE AND RED 40 LAKE), CALCIUM SULFATE, NIACIN, IRON, TBHQ (ANTIOXIDANT), VITAMIN B6 HYDROCHLORIDE, RIBOFLAVIN, THIAMIN MONONITRATE, VITAMIN B12.
So I decided to spend the extra $1.50 and go for a box that actually has REAL blueberries. I picked these and I felt a bit better about the decision because at least now I knew the blueberries came out of a can and they were actual fruit (ignoring the fact they are packed in light syrup). I felt like this was a pretty big improvement. They are still yummy, a little bit more work, but Marcus still loved them. Then I decided to look at all of the ingredients...... This was a lot better, but it still did not make me very comfortable.
I can admit that I am not much of a baker, or a cook for that matter, but I know that I have lot of years of muffin making ahead of me and I really wanted to find a better solution. Enter Pinterest and the tons of recipes available. Here is the plan I came up with. I wanted to find a recipe where I could premix all of the dry items and put them in a baggy in the pantry so that I could make them at any time and it would almost be as easy as store-bought mixes. Step one is finding a recipe and I thought that Pinterest was a good place to start. I also asked my mom if she or my grandma had any go to recipes, but the answer was no.
I started my search for scratch muffin recipes and the game plan is to do one recipe each weekend until I find one that works for us. Meaning: it has to be better for us, contain real ingredients, and, of course, be very yummy – if Marcus does not like it then there is no point in making them.
Last Saturday was my first attempt. I pulled out all of the ingredients and Marcus and I got started. Right from the beginning I was not sure about the recipe. It just seemed like way too much flour..... and it was... they tasted pretty unfortunate and they did not rise very well. Marcus would not even eat a few bites. I felt guilty (I hate wasting food) but even with a lot of butter I could not love them, and I threw them away.
Today we started again and this week the results were a bit more promising. They were not perfect and they still did not rise as much as I wanted, but they were tons better than last week's version. I am worried that the muffins are not rising because of a problem with the baking powder, so I threw it out today and bought a new can for next week. I am going to repeat this recipe at a later date, but it is currently the front runner. Marcus even had half of a muffin this afternoon as a snack!
 |
| The final product from Recipe # 2 |
 |
| Marcus surveying the disaster |
I will update next week when I have the results on #3. Here is a final fun video of Marcus helping us clean up after we were done.
No comments:
Post a Comment