When I sat down to write up this post I fully expected to have another tale of cooking!fail to tell you about. I had after all messed up big time. I expected to have a good laugh, eat some mediocre food and move on with my day. Boy was I wrong.
It all started as most kitchen adventures do, in the local food co-op. I had finished up my shopping and had turned down an aisle to make my way to the register when I saw it: the maroon paper bag proclaiming ‘no sugar added’! I looked at my overflowing cart and thought I don’t really need muffin mix. Normally I’d have everything I need to make muffins at home in the cupboard, but I’ve been packed for the move that’s never happening for ages and I’d be lucky if I had any baking soda left let alone muffin mix, so I waivered. I thought it had to have something else in it, something that would make me put the bag back down but it didn’t, so I splurged, and splurged some more on some blueberries.
Today, since it was supposed to be cooler, I pulled the mix out. I mixed everything together, added some stevia and some blueberries, popped liners into my muffin pan, poured in the batter than looked at the bag. A quarter cup of oil it said. A quarter cup. I stared. I looked at my muffins and I thought about how hard I would laugh when I pulled them out of the oven in fifteen minutes. Somehow I had morphed a quarter cup into a cup, a cup of oil. I had thought that didn’t make any sense but hadn’t checked.
I thought I was going to have to mourn my muffins and move on, but when I pulled them out of the oven something magical happened. They were perfect. They in fact are the best gluten free muffins I’ve ever made even if they are a bit greasy. I’m now planning on buying another bag of mix and trying it out properly. The only change (other than using the proper amount of oil) I’m planning on making is to sift the mix before adding the wet ingredients to make combining them a bit easier.
Usually I’m a box, or bag in this case, skeptic. Even wheat-filled mixes tend to be comparatively expensive, they don’t come out as well as something made from scratch, they don’t taste any better than their homemade counterparts, and they take the same amount of work. With this one though, I think I might be sold. I don’t bake very often anymore, but this would be something I would pick up to have on hand in case of sudden carb cravings or unexpected house guests.
In case anyone’s wondering and for my own purposes: I added ten drops of vanilla stevia and about a cup of blueberries. I baked the muffins at 400* for ten minutes then dropped the temp to 350* and cooked them for another 15 to compensate for the extra liquid/oil.
* I’m not trying to advertise, but if you want to go out and buy a bag by all means go ahead, I’m just excited to have muffins, perfect muffins. These may not be totally foolproof but they are as far as I’m concerned. If nothing else they’re more foolproof than the other gluten free recipes I’ve tried.
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