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Muffins with Variations
1/4 cup margarine 1 egg 1/4 cup sugar 1 cup milk 2 cups flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 4 teaspoons baking powder Mix as for cake. Bake in a greased muffin pan 25 minutes in hot (400 degrees) oven.
A plain creamed-batter muffin of the mid-twentieth-century type, mixed like a butter cake rather than by the modern muffin method. The instructions are compressed to the point of shorthand, so the order of operations is worth spelling out.
- "Mix as for cake"Cream the margarine and sugar until light, beat in the egg, then add the sifted dry ingredients alternately with the milk. This creaming step is the hinge: it is what distinguishes this batter from the wet-into-dry muffin method, and it produces a finer, more cake-like crumb.
- Do not overbeat once the flour is inEven in a creamed batter, flour worked hard after liquid is added develops gluten and gives tunnels and peaks. Fold only until the dry streaks disappear.
- Oven400F as written is correct for muffins and needs no adjustment. Preheat fully; a cold start slows the rise and flattens the tops.
- TimingTwenty-five minutes suits a deep, full pan. Standard modern muffin cups of about 1/3 cup capacity will be done in 18 to 22 minutes, when a skewer comes out clean and the tops spring back.
- FlourPlain all-purpose flour, sifted. With 4 teaspoons of baking powder to 2 cups of flour the leavening is already generous, so do not substitute self-rising flour.
- Baking powderFour teaspoons to 2 cups of flour is on the high side by current standards, where 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons per cup is usual. If your muffins taste faintly metallic or bitter, drop to 3 teaspoons next time.
- MargarineUse a firm stick margarine or butter, softened but not melted, or it will not hold air during creaming. Soft tub spreads with a high water content will not cream properly.
- YieldAbout 12 standard muffins. Grease the pan well, or use paper liners; this batter has relatively little fat for its bulk and will stick.
Muffins of this kind belong to the American quick-bread tradition that opened up once chemical leavening became cheap and reliable in the second half of the nineteenth century: no yeast, no waiting, a batter that goes from bowl to oven in minutes. A creamed batter like this one, with sugar, egg and a stick fat beaten together first, sits at the cake end of that family. The margarine is suggestive: its appearance as the default fat rather than butter points to a book aimed at economical everyday cooking.