Blueberry Muffin Bread Pudding

 Or, on the joys of internet dating. And getting burned. Literally and figuratively.

Also known as: I hope my mother isn’t reading this.

Dear gentlemen who like to meet women on-line:

1.  Professing extreme distaste for my choice of job is not a good way to make a first impression. First, it makes me think you’re an idiot. Second, it is offensive. Third, I don’t gasp in horror when you say you sit in a cubicle all day and at least my job involves social interaction.
2. Are you really laid back and relaxed? Easy-going? Well, I’m sorry to break this to you but I’m not. I have probably been relaxed for roughly 30 seconds in the last ten years. Just a heads up in case your idea of a good time is sitting on the couch staring at the wall.
3. Can you read? Are you sure? Then maybe you should find out if I am actually interested in dating someone who was 18 when I was five. Gross. Seriously.
4.  If you don’t find anything funny, we are not going to get along.
5. If you care deeply about the length, color, or styling of my hair, I should warn you that this is an argument that you are going to lose. I may show up on our next date with neon pink spiky hair just to find out how you react. Childish? Sure, but it’s my hair, so calm down.

Sincerely,

            The nice young lady who is afraid of sea monsters and likes to run marathons.

Perhaps I’m not cut out for this activity. I find it kind of creepy. And I refuse to post pictures of myself at the beach. And frankly, after reading 500 profiles of people who are all laid-back, easy-going, and relaxed, I start to feel like a horrible, uptight person. Except that I frankly think life is way more entertaining when you get excited about things. Or most things. Okay, fine, everything.

Maybe I would get better results if I just wrote an ode to something. Like the Phillies? Or food? Or fire? Or would I sound like a pyro? Let’s give it a shot. . .

Have I ever mentioned that I love fire? And burning stuff? And hot things? Bending glass is so cool. Solid-state phase changes in ceramic pots are amazing (and toxic, fyi). I only wish my aim was a little better. My left arm has it’s own private version of the geologic record, except instead of layered rocks it’s layered burns. I thought the one I got from that bread-baking episode three years was bad, but then I splattered oil on myself, directly on top of the old burn. I get asked at least once a week why I have such a ridiculous looking bruise on my arm. People are only mildly horrified to discover that it’s slightly more permanent than a bruise.

Usually, though, I try to play along with the instructions in the recipes and take things out of the oven before they become a flour-based version of my arm.

Which is why this outcome was sad:

(I’m going to avoid self-righteous ranting here about how I “never burn anything” and “it must because my new oven sucks”. Let’s be completely honest for a hot second: I’m horribly absent-minded, and even the 9 small minutes it takes for some cookies to bake is pushing my attention span. It’s truly miraculous that this particular fiasco is the exception and not the rule).

I could only make my way through half of one of these before I got really depressed and left them in a bag in my refrigerator for a week. There was a lot of internal angst about what to do: eat them, and be digestively horrified? Give them to friends and apologize for burning them? Throw them out and suffer the guilt of wasting food, the cardinal sin in the waste-not-want-not household of my upbringing?

I don’t know what prompted heading in the bread pudding direction (and I will say that googling “muffin bread pudding” to see if this was a horrible idea was not terribly successful. Turns out, making bread pudding in muffin shape is more popular than using your failed muffins as the base of bread pudding). However, I decided that there were several points in favor: first, I could cut off the burned parts and still have relatively tasty muffins. Second, I would be able to finish off a couple things in my fridge (always a challenge when living the single life, frankly). And finally, I could reconstitute those dry, week-old muffins into something moist, spongy, and rich.

As my friend Caitlin said, this recipe is kind of like cheating, because you start with something delicious, and then you turn it into bread pudding. I mean, seriously people. Seriously. (To quote Caitlin).

And in case you are desperate for more details about my personal life, I will just let you in on a little secret: I have cried every day for the past week, and most of those occasions were in public. I really wish I could stop doing that. That is my justification for the addition of rum. Whatever. It tasted awesome.

Another baking disclaimer: I was pretty irresponsible about proportions. I found a recipe, scaled down, and added my own fun stuff based on what I had. I honestly don’t think you can really mess this up too badly as long as you’re in the ball-park.

Blueberry muffin bread pudding

6+ cups cubed blueberry muffins (if you burned them, cut off the burnt parts. Duh. 1 or 1.5 inch cubes work nicely)

3 cups milk+cream (I just blended all the milk products in my fridge. A lot of recipes argue that more fat is better, but I think it’s personal choice.)

3 eggs

½ stick of unsalted butter, melted and cooled (you can use less.)

¼ cup sugar

1 teaspoon of vanilla

1 teaspoon of cinnamon (or to taste)

Extra fun stuff I added (which is totally optional, and can certainly be varied):

Toasted walnuts (nice texture)

Cubed apples (they were languishing in my kitchen)

A couple tablespoons of rum (add to custard mixture). (Special note to Katie: I used the Flor de Caña, because that’s what I had)

Vague instructions:

1. Butter a pan. I used an 8x8 glass Pyrex pan. Exactly the right size for the quantities listed above.
2.  Spread bread cubes around. It should come up pretty much up to and over the top of the pan when loosely spread.
3. Mix together the custard mixture. Try not to cook the eggs with hot butter. Disaster. I’m serious about the melted AND cooled part. Perhaps I should put “melt butter and let it cool” for instruction #1. Or maybe we can treat this like one of those ridiculous tests that is designed to see if you actually read all of the instructions before getting started.
4. Add the garnish elements (fruit, nuts, other fun things) to the bread cubes.
5. Pour the custard mixture over the bread cubes, trying to hit most of the top cubes.
6. I let this sit in my fridge, covered, for an entire day because I got too tired on the night I was making it. Typical. But that worked great, because then all of the muffin pieces got nice and soaked through with the custard mixture. You could also limit yourself to an hour or just overnight (hot bread pudding for breakfast? Oh my god can I come to your house for the weekend?).
7.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. (I will tell you, if you do a Google search, you could probably make a bar graph of the distribution of temperatures suggested between 300 and 400. Maybe I’ll do that next time I get bored). You can let the cold bread-custard mixture sit out during the preheat. Cook for 35-45 minutes, until top bread pieces and bottom of custard are golden brown. Don’t overdo it. Or burn it. Because I have no idea what you do with burned bread pudding.

I’m fairly sure you can actually make bread pudding with just about any bread-related product. I’m also fairly sure that’s how fancy restaurants make bread pudding seem like gourmet food.

p.s. As I am posting this, I am listening to the world’s most depressing advertisement on the radio. “Are you single and all your friends are married? Do you want to go out but have no one to go with?” Wow. Way to make me sound like a loser.  Now I’m dying to sign up for your offer. 

Nec' and Neck

Nectarine-Blackberry Jam Muffins

I have a love hate relationship with muffins, because they can either end up being cakey goodness that is not far removed from a cupcake (but with slightly less appalling nutritional value, depending how you make them) or they can end up resembling a hard, tasteless mess that would barely pass for food on a 17th century sailing vessel. As much as I would surely like to pretend that they are delicious every time I make them, I will be the first to confess that sometimes, frankly, they are nasty.

However, not one to let past defeat predict future success, I like to try again. Sometimes I learn from my mistakes (when I remember to write down what happened), and sometimes it’s like slowly going insane: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results (thank you, Einstein). This time I learned though, because I tried one version Saturday (just jam, no fruit) and one version Monday (jam and fruit) and I think the modifications were well worth the outcome.

This particularly recipe was inspired by the outfit I was wearing on my 18-mile solo run yesterday (in between planning lessons and grading projects): a fancy long sleeved purple tech shirt with orange highlights. That and the fact that the nectarines I bought recently were (a) not very good to begin with and (b) getting mushy at an alarming rate (nothing like rotting fruit to inspire a baking adventure). Hence the orange (nectarine) and purple (blackberry jam).


I originally got this recipe from a friend in college and generally modify it to meet the pantry at hand (i.e. what’s rotting on my counter-top):

“Dry” ingredients (I think the spices enhance the flavor of an otherwise somewhat bland recipe. . .):
2 cups all purpose flour (or a mix of white and whole wheat pastry floor)
1 Tbsp baking powder
dash of nutmeg (optional)
slightly larger dash of cinnamon (option)

“Wet” ingredients (not all wet, but they all get mixed together)
2 large eggs (room temp)
1 cup milk or cream (room temp: milk is fine, but cream is richer. Yogurt also works, as does fruit puree or soy milk)
4-8 Tbsp unsalted butter (soft; the amount is really up to you, but I always think more butter is better, which might explain the quantity of running in my life. You can also use vegetable oil)
2/3 cup sugar (for this, I used half granulated and half light brown, but you can change the ratios, or even experiment with honey if you like that flavoring better)
1 tsp vanilla

Add-ins
2 nectarines, diced into small pieces
Blackberry jam (homemade is obviously best, but not everyone enjoys boiling water and bubbling fruit-sugar)

Part 0: Preparation
Preheat your oven to 400° F (try to hit the temperature right on. . . nothing like muffins burnt on the outside and gooey on the inside to ruin a good morning). Grease or line with paper cups a 12-cup muffin tin (actually, with the amount of extra ingredients in this particular version, I used a 12-cup and a 6 cup. The regular recipe makes about 12 muffins, but the more you add, the more you get).

Part 1: Easy
Mix together the “dry” ingredients. Whisks are kind of fun for this, but not really necessary. No sifting required (this recipe would take about twice as long).

Part 2: Medium
(The order of the steps is somewhat arbitrary. This is what I tried on my highly-successful most recent attempt, so that’s why I’m using it here). Cream the butter and sugar (works best if you let the butter get super soft by sitting out at room temperature rather than melting it in the microwave, but this takes time and forethought. I am not prepared to take sides on the “microwave-destroys-the-emulsion vs. who-has-time-to-wait” argument, so I will just say that in my experience, they both work). Beat in the eggs one at a time, making sure to mix really well after each one (we do not want a mid-muffin omelet because our stirring left a little something to be desired). Add in the vanilla, stir. Add in the milk, stir. (I was somewhat unsatisfied with the milk addition step, because I got this weird globby looking watery mixture, but I decided it was probably something to do with the oil-water combination, so I didn’t worry about it too much and went on with my life.)

Part 3: Hard
This is where muffins can end up like rocks. The key is not to stir too much at this point, because when you stir too much, you kill the light fluffy potential of the muffins. It should NOT look like cake batter after you’ve combined the ingredients (you want the chemical magic to happen while it’s heating up in the oven, not right now). It should look a little lumpy.
Anyway, pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients (all at once! None of this “a little bit at a time” business). Stir a few times, briskly, until everything appears combined (it is amazing, but you can actually over-stir and under-stir at the same time: too much mixing on the top layer, while leaving unmixed flour at the bottom of the bowl. The solution is to make sure you scrape your spoon along the bottom of the bowl as you give it those few brisk strokes).

Part 4: FUN!
This should happen about simultaneously to adding the wet ingredients. I literally just dumped in all of the nectarine pieces and multiple tablespoons of blackberry jam, so I didn’t have to stir extra times to mix them in (and potentially destroy the muffins). The jam works best if you “loosen” it a bit before dumping it into your batter, otherwise it tends to clump and doesn’t get well-distributed.
When the mixing meets your criteria, distribute the batter evenly among the prepared pans. The original recipe (without the FUN!) takes about 12 to 15 minutes, so with the fun stuff more like 15-20. The best way to test it to watch them puff, watch for the formation of a nice rounded top, and when the very top appears to have solidified past a goopy mess, poke a toothpick in to see if it comes out clean).
When they’re done, let them cool in the pan for a couple minutes, and then on a wire rack until they’re cool enough that you won’t singe your tongue (a particular danger with recipes involving hot jam or fruit). They’re really best as soon as possible after baking, but will keep for couple days in the fridge. Re-warming is the best way to enjoy, but room temperature isn’t too bad either.

Results:
Okay, so they sort of ended up looking like Smurfs. The level of blackberry jam integration was challenging (especially since I decided to throw it in at the same time as the nectarines). On the one hand, it kept the muffins from being too dry, but on the other hand, they look a little psychedelic. However, taste is the final determination, and I personally enjoyed them quite a lot (to the extent that I spent a lot of time thinking who I could give them to so I didn’t sit down and eat all 18 at once).

Other modifications:
If you just want jam, you can skip the step where you mix in the add-ins, pour half the batter in the cups, put a spoonful of jam in each cup, and the pour the rest of the batter on the top. This is quite delicious, although sometimes the batter can be a little dry (in which case you need to adjust your cooking time or ingredients for a moister batter or just mix in the jam as originally described).
Blueberries, raspberries, and huckleberries also make delicious muffins, and it is fun to experiment with different spices to bring out the flavor in those fruits. I’ve also made them with fruit puree instead of milk (in one of my rare ventures into vegan baking, which this clearly isn’t at first glance). For those vegan bakers, egg replacer also works just fine as does soy milk and oil (to replace the butter).
If you want to go really crazy, you can sprinkle some not-too-refined sugar on top to give it them a nice sugary crust (probably best to wait until they’ve baked a little or it will sink into the muffin) or glaze it with one of those fancy caramel drizzles. Frankly, most of the time I’m too lazy to do such things, and they taste so good without the extra sugar that I wouldn’t bother.