Who's Baking Muffins?

I love blueberry muffins. Moist, soft blueberry muffins are right up there with chocolate, ice cream, grilled steak, and pancakes for favorite things to eat.

Renee, my boss at works, makes award-winning blueberry muffins. That isn’t a misnomer on my part, either; she entered them in the Orange County Fair last year and won first prize. My girlfriend, when I visited both at Halloween and over Christmas, made me very good blueberry muffins from a mix. They were large and fluffy and quite good—especially with a pat of butter and heated in the microwave for about 20 seconds. Mmmmm.

Said girlfriend picked up some of the same mix and left them here when she visited me. The first batch I tried to make turned out tiny—I misread the package and instead of making 5, I filled a 12-cup muffin tin. Oops.

This time out, knowing my mistake, I used the 6-cup tray. I filled 5 cups 2/3 full, just as the instructions said. Apparently I have small cups, because I had almost exactly enough to fill the last cup 2/3 full too, which I did. I baked for about 18 minutes (the package said 16-21—18 made them lightly golden-brown on top).

And I still got tiny muffins. They literally did not rise at all in the tin!

I brought two into work for a morning snack but showed them to Renee (and Dorothy, who is in the office next door and decided to be nosy). I explained what I did, but neither couldn’t figure out what I could be doing wrong to make them not rise at all. Then Renee had a thought, “Did you really beat the batter?”

“I made sure it was smooth.”

“There’s your mistake. In order for muffins to rise, you want to just make sure the batter is moist—nothing more. If you stir it too much, they don’t rise.”

Dorothy chimed in, “Yeah, you want to stir it like 5 times—just enough to moisten it. You almost want it lumpy.”

How the hell am I supposed to know that?

I am always impressed with people who can cook and especially those who can cook in a variety of different mediums (baking, sauces, stir-fry, steaming, roasting, broiling—whatever!). I have a few things I do pretty well, and I can (usually) follow a recipe to a pretty decent conclusion. I actually enjoy cooking, when I do it, even if I’m not that great. I think I like the challenge of it. But when I meet someone who can cook well, I like to stand back and watch in awe. I’m especially jealous of people who can get everything done roughly at the same time—that is a skill I have yet to master, although I’m finally getting better at it.

In my opinion, even if you are following a recipe, cooking is an art form. There is something to it that allows a level of creativity and secret knowledge that provides one with the skill to transform base ingredients into something magical. Cooking is alchemy. Taking lead and turning it to gold; not everyone can do that. Quite a few turn that lead into dirt or ash and some can only keep it lead. Many can turn that lead into brass or silver—perfectly respectable attempts, and valuable—but few have the skill and talent to turn what they touch into gold. If you take two people randomly off the street, put them in identical kitchen environments and with identical recipes and ask them to make the same dish, and one may make the best meal you’ve ever tasted and another will make something that tastes slightly better than burnt cardboard. It’s just the way cooking goes—not everyone can do it.

This week I will try another one of those mixes. This time, I will try my best to only just moisten the mix. We’ll see if I get better results.