Jean Anderson - Mad for Muffins: 70 Amazing Muffin Recipes from Savory to Sweet

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My mother wasnt a fancy cook but she was a good cook who baked yeast breads and rolls and muffins. Lots of muffins. For breakfast almost always and sometimes for midday dinner and supper as well.

Muffins are quick, and muffins are easy and practically foolproof if a few simple rules are followed. For these reasons, Mother taught me how to make muffins before moving on to more complex cakes and cookies. I couldnt have been more than four at the time, at least I know that I hadnt learned to read well enough to follow a recipe.

I remember those early lessons well and in particular the reason why muffins are so quick, so easy: Dry ingredients combined in one bowl, wets in a second, then the two mixedbut barely. This is key if muffins are to be fine and feathery. The wets and drys should be mixed only enough to combine; in fact muffin batters should be lumpy with flecks of flour clearly visible. If not, your muffins will be peaked and rubbery and riddled with tunnels.

I began with a no-nonsense muffin, no frills, what I call , equally easy except for pitting the sticky dates and snipping them into little pieces (oh, for the pre-snipped dates every supermarket now sells).

With Mother there to coach me, I learned to sift and measure flour in the proper dry measuring cups (we called these little nested cups Mary Annes). I loved the way they stacked: the cup measure tucked into the cup, those two tucked into the cup, then all three neatly housed in the 1 cup measure.

I learned, too, that spouted glass measures were for liquidsmilk, vegetable oils, molasses, syrups, fruit juices, and such. And even more important, that they should never be used for flours, sugars, meals, and other dry ingredients because it is impossible to measure them accuratelyno filling to the top, then scooping off the excess as I had learned to do with the Mary Annes.

Muffins launched me into the world of baking and Id barely soloed before I was improvising with the basic recipes I now considered boring. My itch to improvise has never waned, in fact my reason for writing MAD FOR MUFFINS was to create a portfolio of muffins that captured the unusual, often seductive flavors Id discovered as a food and travel writer constantly on assignmentin Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, South America.

So why not the curries and chutneys of India captured in a muffin? The lemongrass of Thailand? The coconut milk of half a dozen Asian countries? The falafel and hummus of the Middle East? The sun-dried tomatoes, pepperoni, and exquisite cheeses of Italy?

And how could I neglect the peppery accents of our own Southwest... the whole-wheats and ryes, other grains and brans of the prairie states... the silken stone-ground cornmeals of the South, to say nothing of its twenty-four-karat sweet potatoes... the maple sugars and syrups of New England as well as its cranberries now available dried as well as fresh and frozen? Oh, yes, and the sharp Cheddars of Vermont and Wisconsin, not to mention the country hams of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia.