Apple Cider Muffins
Last year I was reading a cookbook that gave a recipe for baked apple cider doughnuts. Not fried, leaving you with gallons of used lard to somehow unload. Have you ever read a cookbook that told you what to do with used cooking oil?
Me either.
Anyway. My husband, he loves, loves, loves doughnuts. So when I read this baked apple cider doughnut recipe, I all but leaped off the my chair, bad back and all, and danced off to the market in seach of apple cider.
Well, I can’t remember what month it was, but I was bitterly disappointed, because apple cider was nowhere to be found. I vowed to make baked apple cider doughnuts the very second apple cider season rolled around next year.
Well, next year is now. And there’s a pandemic about the land. Which I did not plan for. (Did anyone?) The book with the doughnut recipe? It came from the library. Which is closed. So much for the doughnut recipe.
Of course, there’s the internet. I found an excellent baked apple cider doughnut recipe online, and baked some delicious apple cider doughnuts. But they required the mixer, and I was stupid enough to clean my husband’s study a few days ago. My back is much better than it was last year, but my husband’s study, it was a mess. Now my back is, too.
The mixer weighs a ton, and using it means moving it. Muffins do not need mixers.
Joy of Cooking was consulted. Their muffin recipe forms the spine of mine: I would never claim myself an inventor of recipes except in the rarest of instances, and this ain’t a rare instance. Joy gave the backbone, necessary at this moment both metaphorically and literally.
Apple cider muffins may be eaten alone, with butter and jam, or alongside some fruit. You know, healthy.
Apple Cider Muffins
Adapted from the basic muffin recipe in Joy of Cooking, 1997 Edition, Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, and Ethan Becker
Yield: 12 muffins
Preparation time: about 15 minutes to assemble, 20-25 minutes to bake.
2 cups/16 ounces/464 grams all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1/2-1 cup/4 ounces-8 ounces/114 g-227g white or brown sugar, or a mixture; see notes
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup/8 ounces/227g of dairy: can be milk, cream, half-and-half, yogurt, or sour cream.
1 stick/8 tablespoons/114g sweet butter, melted
1 cup unfiltered apple cider (see notes)
optional additions: (some or all)
1/2-1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon each:
ground ginger
ground cloves
ground nutmeg
ground allspice
To coat the baked muffins: (optional)
1 stick/8 tablespoons/114 grams sweet butter, melted
1/2 cup/4 tablespoons white sugar
2 generous tablespoons brown sugar
Preheat your oven to 400F/200C.
Lavishly butter a twelve-hole muffin tin. You could spray it with nonstick spray, but I feel it lends the muffins a chemical taste. Muffin paper liners are another choice.
You will need two large bowls. In the first, mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and optional spices, if using them.
In the second large bowl, mix the eggs, vanilla, sugar, and whatever dairy you’ve chosen.
Melt your butter, and add that, a bit at a time, stirring.You don’t want to scramble the eggs.
Once the butter is added, pour in the apple cider and stir to blend. It may appear curdled.
Tip the flour into the bowl of wet ingredients and stir to just blend. Batter will appear alarmingly wet and lumpy, like sloppy pancake batter. That’s okay. You’ll be tempted to overmix. Don’t.
Spoon the batter into each muffin well; they will be filled to the very top.
Bake until a tester comes out clean, 20-25 minutes. Place on cooling rack and prepare the sugar coating, if using.
Melt another stick of butter in a small dish. Mix the sugars in a second small dish.
I find placing a cooling rack over a sheet of parchment makes for less mess when coating the muffins.
Once the muffins have cooled enough to handle, tip out of pan, or pry out using heatproof spatula. Dip each muffin into butter, then sugar. Place on cooling rack over parchment. Allow to set for at least an hour.
Apple Cider Muffins will hold, in a ziploc or airtight container, for two days. Freeze up to two months.
Notes:
If you don’t have apple cider, you can use apple juice; taste for sugar, and adjust accordingly.
I used a scant half cup of sugar (114 grams), using 2 ounces (56g) each of white and brown sugars. You can use just white sugar, just brown, or mix them, and use as little as a half cup (114g) or up to a whole cup (227g). Don’t go below a half-cup or the muffins won’t bake properly.
Variations:
The final roll in cinnamon sugar may be skipped if you wish.
Add nuts like walnuts or pecans; sliver some apples and stir them into the batter. Raisins or sultanas would also work here.
Instead of rolling the muffins in cinnamon sugar, dust the tops only, or fill the muffin wells halfway with batter, add a teaspoon of cinnamon sugar, top off with more batter, and be done with it.
Mini-muffins are possible with the right pan; decrease baking time.
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