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Queen of Muffins
1/4 cup butter 1/3 cup sugar 1 egg 1/2 cup milk (scant) 1½ cups flour 2½ teaspoons baking powder Mix and bake same as Twin Mountain Muffins.
A plain baking-powder muffin enriched with hot cooked rice, made by the standard creamed-butter method that Farmer calls for in Twin Mountain Muffins. The published ingredient list here is incomplete, so treat the quantities below as guidance rather than a full formula.
- The rice is the pointRice muffins work best with the rice going in hot and freshly cooked, so it is soft enough to break up into the batter rather than staying in firm grains. Rice that has been chilled firms up and is more likely to remain in distinct grains.
- Quantities as printedThe list gives two different flour amounts and a baking-powder figure that cannot be read with confidence. Twin Mountain Muffins use about 3 teaspoons baking powder to 2 cups flour, and period recipes vary upward from there; a scant 1/2 cup milk alone will not wet 2 cups of flour plus rice without additional liquid or eggs.
- The method referred toTwin Mountain Muffins are made by creaming butter with sugar, beating in the egg, then adding the milk and the flour sifted with baking powder. The cross-reference assumes the reader will supply that butter, sugar and egg from the other recipe.
- OvenNo oven heat is specified here; the cross-referenced recipe simply directs baking in buttered tins for about twenty-five minutes, which suits a moderately hot oven.
- MixingStir only until the flour disappears. Extended beating after the liquid goes in develops gluten and gives tunnelled, tough muffins with peaked tops.
- YieldA batter built on about 2 cups of flour fills eight to ten standard muffin cups, or a dozen small ones.
- TinsNineteenth-century iron gem pans held less than a modern muffin cup and were heated before filling. If you use one, grease it well and expect shorter baking.
Rice muffins, rice cakes and rice breads run all through American cookbooks of the nineteenth century, a habit owing much to the general thrift of working leftover grain into the next morning's breakfast. Cooked rice adds moisture and tenderness without more flour, and it gives a muffin a slightly damp, close crumb quite unlike an all-flour one. The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book is full of recipes like this that exist chiefly as a variation on a neighbouring page: Fannie Farmer's Twin Mountain Muffins serve as the base formula, and a whole family of muffins is built by swapping part of the flour or adding a cup of something already cooked. The showy name is typical of the period's breakfast-cake nomenclature, where queens, gems and puffs were sold on the title as much as the ingredients.