I didn’t mean to disappear and worse I have a terrible excuse: I took a nap. The same week that I conquered my cooking Mount Everest—a lasagna I’d only dreamed of for six years one that still took me many attempts in the kitchen to get right and over a week to write—I was going back and forth with my publisher over the page designs for my cookbook and (no doubt) giving some poor book designer gray hair. One day I’ll remind my editor of the time I said I didn’t care how the book looked “just make it pretty!” and she’ll snort coffee out of her nose. It’ll probably be a while. Nevertheless the day after I posted the lasagna recipe we finally found something that everyone was happy with and now they’re designing the remaining hundreds of pages and I think I slept a million hours that night. I did the same thing the next night and the third night when I yawned at 9pm and said I was thinking about ending it all my husband—who usually has an endless supply of sleep and I’m the one who wakes up at 7:30 even when it’s my turn to sleep in—looked at me like I had two heads. I just… had a lot of catching up to do.
| Channel | Publish Date | Thumbnail & View Count | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|
 smitten kitchen | 2021-06-09 12:00:14 |  153,973 Views |
Perfect Blueberry Muffins | Smitten Kitchen with Deb Perelman
We are also officially in the part of the year I affectionately call The Dregs of Winter. It’s not spring yet it’s at least a month before anything tasty or green emerges from the earth and another month after that before it’s tasty enough to eat. It’s not quite snowy and pretty enough to enjoy a New York Winter Wonderland; it’s just cold and kind of boring. Most of the time the way I get out of the winter doldrums is not by sleeping through it but by starting to plan an escape. I’m starting to yearn for a tropical place please where the deep blue ocean meets the clear blue sky on a horizon so far away as to be almost incomprehensible to this city dweller whose current view is nothing more than the building across the street. And so I think long and hard about it an open book on my lap my fingers wrapped around an ice-cold fruit cocktail with an umbrella and then I fly home a few days later my usual ghostly complexion a little off and my mind empty of thoughts that don't include "Is it time to re-skin?" and "Are we too old to go down the water slide that leads to a swim-up bar?" You know weighty stuff.
Unfortunately this daydream of a trip is still two very long weeks away so I’ve been sublimating my wanderlust as I always do with baked goods. I can’t warm up the warm weather here or myself any sooner but I can make a breakfast muffin that evokes a place without winter. I’ve still stuck to my muffin rules—muffins are breakfast foods not just cake though I have yet to convince this guy—so it’s got a good helping of whole wheat flour lots of good yogurt. And then I’ve supplemented the coconut in two ways one with shredded coconut and the other with a relatively new ingredient to me coconut oil. Coconut oil is amazing but I probably don’t need to tell you that. In addition to having a lightness that comes from fats that are solid at room temperature (think: shortening but with a heavenly flavor) it gives each crumb a dreamy coconut scent. The resulting muffin is dense but light and impossibly moist and will hopefully be an effective temporary replacement for the warm weather ahead.
One year ago: White and Dark Brownies Green Bean Salad with Pickled Red Onions and Fried Almonds and Lemon and Olive Oil Spaghetti Two years ago: Chocolate Soufflé Cupcakes with Mint Cream Spaghetti Cacio e Pepe Monkey Bread with Cream Cheese Frosting Cauliflower and Caramelized Onion Tart Three years ago: Alex's Mom's Stuffed Cabbage Roasted Coconut Shortbread Devil's Chicken Thighs + Braised Leek and Red Kidney Bean Curry Four years ago: Best Chocolate Pudding Spread Puttanesca + Smashed Artichoke Heart Salad Five years ago: Sour Cream and Bran Muffins Mom's Chocolate Chip Meringues and Dill and Quark Bread + A Whole Lot of Bread Making Tips
