What’s the difference between a cupcake and a muffin?
Honestly, I don’t know. But I do know that I can eat a muffin for breakfast without anyone (aka my husband) giving me that “Oh-no-you-shouldn’t!” hairy eyeball. You get a free pass for breakfast with a muffin. You don’t get a free pass for breakfast with a cupcake.
But even if this WERE a cupcake—and I’m not saying it is—winter is here and I need some meat on my bones in case my car crashes into a snowy ravine in the country and I end up wasting away for days on end waiting for someone to notice I went to Wal-Mart.
Wait. I don’t need to rationalize. These are muffins, not cupcakes!
These are a wonderful, moist and a bit spicy muffins that will make your heart sing. A bit of ginger, some cinnamon and a handful of coconut make it a not-your-usual-morning-cupcake-muffin. So drag out those muffin tins and bake away.
Ginger Coconut Morning Muffins
1 1/3 cups unbleached white flour
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1/3 cup sugar
3 eggs
1/3 cup unsulferated molasses
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup boiling water
1 cup sweetened, flaked coconut
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 12 muffin tins with tulip liners or other muffin cups of butter and flour 15 muffin cups.
In a small bowl, mix together flour, ginger, cinnamon, cloves and salt.
In a mixer, beat together butter and sugar until smooth. Add eggs one at a time and beat until smooth. Add molasses and beat until smooth.
Boil the water and add the baking soda. Gradually add this to the butter mixture. Slowly add the flour mixture and beat until blended. Stir in coconut.
Pour batter into prepared muffin cups. Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until a knife inserted into one of the muffins comes out clean.
P.S.
Don’t forget You Need This Book. Leave a comment there by the end of the day tomorrow to be included in the drawing.
Family dinners have always been an important part of my life. Family dinners with cake, especially, have always been an important part of my life. And the best dinners are those featuring oatmeal cake with coconut topping.
I remember as a kid my parents, brothers and I used to head over to my grandparents’ house for Sunday dinner after church. All my aunts, uncles and numerous cousins would gather to tell outrageous stories, build and fix things (my family is always building and fixing things) while my grandmother cooked a traditional Southern dinner and my grandfather escaped to the garden to tend his roses.
My grandmother’s dinners never had fewer than, say, 15 bowls and heaping plates on the table—fried chicken, collard greens, mashed potatoes and gravy, oniony cole slaw, lima beans, angel biscuits, salty Virginia ham, green beans. And the desserts. Oh, the desserts!
We would eat in shifts because there wasn’t enough room at the table for everyone. Afterwords, the women (no, never the men) would pitch in and clean the kitchen.
I remember one Sunday my Aunt Margaret had finished up in the kitchen and decided to mop and wax my grandmother’s floor. I watched on, chatting, as she put the finishing touches and finally managed to wax her way into a corner.
“Oh no! Here I am in this corner and the floor’s all wet. I guess I’ll just stand here until it’s dry,” she declared.
“No! You can just walk out and wax over your footsteps,” I said, my five-year-old self proud of coming up with the solution.
Of course, my Aunt Margaret was always the kidder and had let me come up with the solution. Still, it’s a fond memory—well, that and the cake.
My husband loves this cake so much he nearly dances when he realizes that I have made one. And he keeps saying—over and over again—”Have I mentioned how much I love this cake?”
Now, if this chocolate-loving gal says that she loves an oatmeal cake, you can take it to the bank that this is a good cake. And it’s one of those amazing cakes that only get better with time.
So make it now and make someone happy.
Oatmeal Cake with Coconut Topping 1 1/4 cup boiling water
1 cup old fashioned oats
8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/3 cups flour
pinch of salt
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Pour boiling water over oats and let stand for 15 minutes. In a mixer, cream together butter, white and brown sugars. Add eggs. In a separate bowl, mix together baking soda, cinnamon, flour and salt. Gradually add the flour mixture to the sugar, butter and egg mixture until well blended. Stir in the oatmeal/water mixture until well combined. Pour into a 9 x 13″ baking pan. (I use a Pyrex baking pan.) Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes or until a knife inserted into the middle comes out clean. Top with topping after the cake cools for about 10 to 15 minutes.
Coconut Topping
8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter (brought to room temperature)
1 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 cups fresh grated coconut
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/8 to 1/4 cup milk
Blend all the ingredients together until well mixed. Pour over warm (but not hot) cake and spread evenly.
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By the way, if you haven’t voted on a chicken name for The Chicken Formerly Known as Minnie Ruth, please do so now. I really don’t want to name this chicken Johnny.
When I was a kid, my mom would make the same things over and over for dinner. I know there wasn’t a lot of money to throw around on fancy ingredients. And my dad was a beef and potatoes kind of fellow. But Mom came up with some pretty wacky food combinations. Hot dogs in Ragu over white rice anyone? And, as I recall, there was a good deal of hamburger and the occasional Spam meal.
Frankly, now that I am the head chef Chez Bumblebee I can empathize with her frustration cooking seven nights a week for a crowd with widely varied ideas about what constitutes a good meal.
But where my mom became truly inspired was in cooking desserts. We had big glass jars in the kitchen that Mom kept filled with cookies and sweet bars. There was always at least one cake, and often two, made from scratch. I don’t believe the sun ever went down on a day when I didn’t have a delicious homemade treat.
One of my favorite cakes was a fabulously rich Buttermilk Chocolate Chip Cake. We just called it Yum Yum Cake.
I loved the cake so much that before I went off to college I copied down the recipe—along with several of my other favorite cake recipes—on notebook paper. This yellowed notebook page is still in my recipe binder and now I regularly make this cake for my own family.
If you’ve never made a cake from scratch, this is a perfect one to try. Once you get the hang of baking cakes you’ll never want to buy store-bought again.
Cake Ingredients
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 cup miniature marshmallows
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
Cream together sugar and butter with a mixer. Mix flour, baking powder, soda and salt in a bowl. Add egg, vanilla and buttermilk to the sugar and butter mixture. Gradually add the dry ingredients and mix until well combined. Fold in marshmallows and chocolate chips by hand.
Spread batter into a well buttered 9″ x 13″ x 2″ baking pan. (I use a glass one.) The batter will be extremely thick.
Cook in a pre-heated 350 degree oven for 40 to 45 minutes or until a knife inserted comes out clean.
Cool for about 10 to 15 minutes before topping.
Topping Ingredients
1 cup sugar
1/3 can evaporated milk
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
6 ounces chocolate chips
Bring sugar, milk and butter to a boil. Remove from heat, add chips and stir until melted.
What’s on your plate today? The weather here is sunny and at least not frigid. I’ll continue my early spring garden cleanup and also clean and repair bird houses. The bluebirds have made their return and are already checking out the real estate. What a joy to watch over my Sunday morning coffee.
I find this one of the most anxiety-producing times of the year in the garden.
As I head outside and begin the winter cleanup, the whole summer garden thing just seems incredibly overwhelming. There’s so much to do. And I’m just one person out there. Honestly, I felt like sitting down to have a good cry about mid-afternoon. But I managed to put one foot in front of the other and actually got a good amount of tidy-up work done. Tomorrow will be more of the same.
Thank you everyone who left a comment explaining how you approach reading and leaving comments on blog posts. The cumulative input has been extremely helpful. The overall consensus is that you’ll read comments if it’s an interesting discussion. You don’t usually subscribe to comments because it clogs up your email box. And you’ll only check back to see if the author has responded if you’ve left a question. That about sums it up.
On another note, I have selected by random number generator the winner of Grocery Gardening. She’s been notified. When she responds back, I’ll announce who she is.
I went outside to re-fill the bird feeders—AGAIN. The parts of my lawn that don’t look like the frozen tundra resemble a swamp. With every step I take my foot sinks down at least an inch. Walking to the feeders I can see my path in the mud.
I also see that we lost one small ornamental tree by the driveway as well as one of my rose trellises, which succumbed to the weight of the snow.
Spring better hurry up and get here. I have a lot of work to do.
Are you sick of everyone talking about the weather? I am too, but here goes…
There is so much snow on the ground, I don’t know when it’ll all melt. On top of that, much of it has iced to the extent that moving it from one place to another requires a pick ax. Walking in the back yard to fill the bird feeders is like walking on a bumpy ice rink. There are trees and bushes that need a bit of first aid to remove partially broken branches, but I don’t dare risk skating across the ice with my pruners. Not yet anyway.
Still, there is hope. Although we’re expecting snow flurries today, the weather should warm up into the forties in the next few days, providing some melting relief.
But really, all this unrelieved WHITE is getting to me!
