Muffins + Beer = Good

Thursday morning of last week dawned clear, sunny, and warm. I tossed on my ipod (something I never ran with before, but I spent so much time on a treadmill over the winter, I've become a bit addicted to being able to use the Ting Tings and Andrew WK to get me through the last few miles and the delightful Athens hills), and hit the road. The gorgeous weather worked against my better judgment and I ran about 5-5 1/2 miles, halfway out to Strouds Run and back. My mostly-healed ankle ligaments didn't mind, but the rest of my leg muscles were a little surprised to be back in action. For the last mile, all I could think about was the Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout on the door of my fridge. Nothing finishes a long, hard run like a deep, dark beer. Since muffin making was the only thing on my agenda for the day, beer for breafast ("B4B" acronym patent pending) seemed an excellent idea.

It was. More than excellent it was glorious. This was one of the better stouts I've had. I'm not always a fan of the chocolate notes brewed in to make a beer seem deeper, but this was good. Combined with a long hamstring stretch, it was close to transcendent. It's a seasonal though so get it while you can.

Additionally, nothing compliments baking like beer. I started with Banana-Split Muffins (adapted from a recipe in the Nov/Dec 2008 issue of VegNews)

3 very ripe bananas, mashed (the riper the better)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup olive oil
1 tbs vanilla
2 eggs worth of Ener-G egg replacer
2 cups all-purpose whole wheat (apww) flour
1 tbs baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup of vegan chocolate chips
1 cup of dried cherries
1 cup of walnuts, chopped

In a large bowl, whisk together the first five ingredients. In a smaller bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix the dry into the wet, then fold in the chocolate, cherries, and nuts. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes.

These suckers were awesome. Seriously. They initially taste like a banana muffin; wheaty, hearty....then, BAM! The aftertaste is completely cheap, sticky, old-school, Dairy-Queen-like, banana split. I swear, I tasted vanilla soft-serve. The muffins are pretty chunky, but the whole wheat/olive oil combination held up well and kept these moist enough to eat without (soy)milk. The vegan chocolate chips did not melt like the Toll House commercial cookies but reading Zillions magazine (the consumer reports magazine for children) as a kid taught me that the food in pictures and on tv are all lies. Glue for milk to keep the Cheerios floating, steak coated with shellac for juiciness... Those melty chips were probably part caulk and part hair-dye. The vegan ones most certainly are not.

Banana-Split Muffins: 5 out of 5 stars and a "please make these again" from my dad.

Now, wouldn't you know it, but B4B and "beer with baking" turned into B4L when my friend Kevin called, fresh from a stressful week of midterms and day of presentations, with an invitation to BW's. There isn't a lot for a vegan at a wing joint, so I stuck with the Mich Ultra tall boys.

Upon returning from my liquid lunch I tackled two more muffin recipes and cracked open a Stiegl . Stiegl is a fabulously delicious Austrian beer the praises of which my roomie came back from his quarter in Salzburg singing. Due to some persistant nagging from me, my roomie, and Kevin, the liquor store in Athens now carries it. $15.99ish for a 6-pack of pint bottles and totally worth it.

But back to the muffins. The first recipe, Fruitcake Muffins, is also from the Nov/Dec 2008 VegNews. I was hesitant to try these muffins. My only experience with fruitcake was the ones for sale in little celophane-wrapped bricks on the counter at the bank at Christmas. They were horrendous to look at. What are those green and red shiny things anyway? How can you have fruit in a cake that needs no refrigeration? But I had a can of crushed pineapple in the cupboard, so those questions would have to wait.

1/2 cup almond milk
1/4 cup crushed pineapple and juice
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup maple syrup

Mix together the above ingredients in a big bowl. Set aside.

1 cup oat flour
1 cup apww flour
1 tbs baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg, cloves, allspice

Sift the dry ingredients together in a smaller bowl and then mix with the wet. Fold in the following:

1 cup dried cherries
1 cup of raisins
1 cup of chopped nuts (I used pecans and walnuts, but almonds or macadamias would have also worked well)

Bake for about 26 minutes at 350. Word of advice: try and keep the dried fruit covered with batter. The dry cherry pieces don't burn per se, but they smell like they are burning. I think it took 26 minutes to bake these because I kept opening the oven to check on the carmelizing fruits.

These muffins went a long way in redeeming the fund-raiser slabs of bank cake in my memory. They are very spicy, very dense, but not brick-like at all. I ran out of tupperware so these sat out on the counter over night and were still soft in the morning. The oat flour was a delicious addition. It cut the wheatiness without sacrificing stability the way white flour can. I might use vanilla almond milk next time and cut back a little on the maple syrup. The fruit makes these sweet enough for me.

Verdict: 4 out of 5 stars but these are definitely cold-weather muffins so now that it's getting nice and sunny I probably won't make these again til winter.

Next on the docket, a delicious Great Lakes Blackout Stout and Carrot Sunshine Muffins. The GL was good, less faceted than the Brooklyn, but tasty. Plus it reminds me of sitting in my garage on an old, land-line phone, talking to my best friend (who was in basic training at Ft. Benning), and eating about 3 pints of Rice Dream so they wouldn't go to waste in the blackout.

But I digress. The Sunshine muffins are adapted from a recipe from The Veganomicon. I do not have the proper tool for zesting so I try to creatively omit zest when I can. Also, this recipe inconveniently calls for half a cup of yogurt. Most yogurt cups (even the soy ones) are 6 oz. (or 3/4 cup) tubs. I just put the entire tub in, made 1/2 cup of soymillk a scant one, and used more wheat flour than white to thicken things up. You could always use the 1/2 cup and eat the rest of the yogurt outright. Yogurt is delicious.

1/2 cup (or a whole little tub) vanilla or plain or orange soy yogurt
1/2 cup (scant) plain soymilk
1 tbs of ground flax seeds (flax seed meal)
1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 cup dark brown sugar

Mix the above ingredients well in a large bowl. Then mix in,

1/2 cup crushed pineapple, very well drained (really, get as much juice out of it as you can)
1/3 cup orange juice (instead of pnap juice and a tsp of orange zest)
1/2 cup golden raisins (they look prettier than the dark raisins and have a lighter flavor)

In a seperate bowl sift together

1 1/3 cups of a combination apww and white flours
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground ginger (if using the wet, refrigerated kind, mix this in with the wet stuff)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt

Mix the dry into the wet. Scoop into muffin tins. Definitely fill the cups to the very top or a little over. They don't rise much at all. Bake at 350 for about 26 minutes. Let them get a little brown on top and let them cool almost all the way in the pan. Depending on how much white flour you use, this'll help them retain their shape.

End result: Delicious. Period. End of sentence. Despite the carrots, these are not a carrot cake type muffin. Fluffy and wonderful. Good cold too.

I ended the night with a Pomegranate-Raspberry Mich Ultra I found in the back of the fridge. Not a bad girly beer, better on the beach or next to a pool, but by 10pm I was less than discerning about what I was drinking.

Thus endeth Muffin-Beer-a-Palooza. Moral of the story? The world would be a better place if everyone had a dozen muffins and a 6 pack of cold ones.