Random moosages as I see fit.

Why the cupcake liners when these are muffins? Because I didn’t want to wash the muffin tin. And if you’re careful while filling, you don’t have to!

Ok.  Finally getting to the full post from that preview, two weeks ago.  Now you get the recipe and full backstory.  Huzzah!

The other day, I really wanted donuts.  Like really.  But the thing is, I have made a deal with myself due to the lingering effects of and inability to break the habit of stress eating.  I am allowed to eat snacks and desserts still, but I have to make them myself (there are a few exceptions).

Now, this both works and doesn’t work.  It works because I’m REALLY lazy.  More likely than not, I will be too lazy to actually make anything for myself and I’ll just go without.  It doesn’t work because I can bake moderately well, I have access to all kinds of things, and I’m used to making batches that are overly large as I often end up cooking/baking for a large number of people.  ANYWAY!

I really wanted donuts.  But I had to make them myself.  Sounds like an excuse to make a mess in the kitchen.  Actually, not that much of a mess.  Otherwise, I would have gone with the full deep fat frying method you normally use for donuts.  But I didn’t want to.  First of all, it uses a lot of oil.  Oil that can be used again for deep frying other stuff (at least a few times if you’re careful), but not really useful for anything else.  And then you have all this oil to get rid of.  Meh.

Second, I really like cake donuts.  Yeast donuts are all well and good, but I really like the texture and denseness of cake donuts.  So, I opted for baked donuts.

King Arthur’s Flour actually has several recipes for baked donuts.  They also sell the donut pan.  But I didn’t have a donut pan for my donut making excursion.  What do?  Make your own, of course.

Top with Cinnamon has a good tutorial on how to make your own donut pan…things…with foil (there’s also a recipe for donuts there).  I basically followed her instructions except that I used foil sheets, as I have a lot of food service foil sheets, and instead of cutting off the excess when forming the pan, I crinkled it under.  It makes for a more stable pan.

I tried making some donuts modifying this King Arthur’s Flour recipe for stuff I had on hand.  And I ended up with these.

Donutty in shape, but not in texture.  I had to sub out too many ingredients to get a good cake donut.  Not all was lost, however.  It actually makes a pretty good muffin.

Yield: 12 muffins

Time: 10 min prep + 20 min cook = 30 min

Materials:

• 225 g whole wheat flour (about 2 c)
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 150 g sugar (about 0.75 c)
• 0.25 tsp nutmeg
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 0.5 tsp salt
• 4 oz unsweetened applesauce
• 4 large eggs
• 1 apple, peeled and chopped

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Whisk all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.
3. Beat eggs in a separate bowl until foamy.
4. Beat applesauce into eggs until combined.
5. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and fold until just combined.
6. Fold in apples.
7. Fill muffin pan to about 0.75 full.
8. Bake for 15-20 min.

Notes:

• You’ll remember that I’m adverse to using volumetric measurements for dry goods and that I like to use metric for weights.
• I would highly recommend using whole wheat flour for this recipe because of the lower gluten content.  Actually, it’s not necessarily that there is less gluten in whole wheat flour but that it’s harder to form gluten.  If you do use white flour, you have to be VERY CAREFUL not to over mix.  Otherwise you’ll end up with a tight, tough texture that is not muffin-like at all.  If you have cake flour lying around, definitely use that over all purpose.  Definitely don’t use bread flour.
• I used a food processor for the apple, in case you’re curious.  And I believe I’ve been using Fuji apples, because that’s what we’ve been eating.  If you want to use a tart apple or add some lemon juice to your apple, you may want to make those teaspoons of baking powder heaping (as opposed to level) to compensate for the extra acid.
• If you wanted to make these as donuts, you’ll get about 12 of those.  You shouldn’t fill the donut pans much more than half full.  And baking will probably be toward the 15min side.  Muffins, since they don’t have a hole in the middle and are a big lump of batter, will take closer to the 20 min side.
• I like to pour all the batter into a Ziploc bag and then cut a corner off and squeeze the batter into the pan.  It’s easier to control and cleaner.
• You can totally beat the eggs to foamy by hand.  I’ve beat egg whites to hard peak by hand before (my arm was useless the day after).  Foamy is nothing.
• If you don’t like muffins that are lopsided and your oven always produces lopsided muffins (or cupcakes, or cakes), your oven probably doesn’t heat evenly.  It’s not a big deal.  Just spin the muffin tin around halfway through baking.
• Hey look, this recipe is relatively healthy!  No oil and whole wheat flour!  If you really wanted, you could sub the sugar for honey!  (If you do, you’ll have to cut down on other wet stuff).  This was actually not my intention.  I don’t believe in “healthy baking” because…you’re baking…probably pastries.  They are not and will never be “healthy.”  You can make them healthier than their full fat, sugar, processed white flour counterparts, but they still aren’t healthy.  Moderation guys.  Moderation.  Anyway, this recipe ended up being of the healthier variety because I had applesauce I wanted to get rid of, we were somehow out of all purpose flour and bread flour (which is saying something because we buy both in 50lb bags…and we were completely out of both) but I did have a small bag of whole wheat flour lying around, and we had all these apples that needed to be eaten.  Substitution to the rescue!  Or something.