Immortal Muffins
I am ravaged by exhaustion. Today I have done house painters*, hellhounds, PEGASUS, A New Little Thing for Organ**, gardening, more hellhounds, and handbells.***
Meanwhile I am still mourning last weekend’s muffins, so cruelly sacrificed to the welfare of society.† I’d originally been going to post the recipes I used on the fete Sunday they were eaten. But then I thought I’d immortalise them here anyway.
Apple-cornmeal muffins
1 ¼ c plain flour
2T – ¼ c sugar
1 T baking powder
1 c yellow cornmeal
¾ c apple juice
¼ c bland oil or melted butter
1 beaten egg
1 c peeled chopped apple, something tart and crisp
Mix dry, mix wet, mix mix. Add apples last. Stir just till dry ingredients damp. Fill 12-15 muffin cups (greased or paper-cup lined) not quite full (they need room to rise). 400°F 20-25 minutes.
Lavinia’s lemon-currant muffins
2 c plain flour
2 T – ¼ c sugar
1 T baking powder
¼ c melted butter (I don’t myself feel you can get away with oil in this recipe)
¾ c apple juice
1 beaten egg
½ tsp lemon essence#
½ c currants
Mix dry, mix wet, mix mix. Fold currants in last.
12 muffins, 400°F 20-25 minutes
# If you can’t find lemon essence, you can mess about with lemon juice and grated rind. I used to do this, but I’ve forgotten the proportions (I’d start by subbing 2T lemon juice for 2T of the apple juice plus 2 tsp rind. That’s the cautious end though. I’d almost certainly decide I wanted more) and didn’t write them down. Just be sure you use FRESH juice and FRESH rind.
* * *
* And if one more nice helpful person tells me that dark colours are claustrophobic I am going to arrange that they have some nice dark blue and purple bruises! I have already yielded on the subject of the attic, because I think that all the three dimensional crankiness would give me vertigo in a more vivid colour, the little room that used to be the second bedroom till the stairs ate it is going to be covered in bookshelves so it doesn’t matter what colour it is, and I’ve agreed to the hall in neutral boring because I have no idea what I’m going to want to do ultimately, and I still have the sitting-room, the remaining bedroom, and the dining room–all of which open off the hall–to play with. So for now if I want a cobalt^ bathroom, to go with the fancy tiles, I can have it. Furthermore, I’m the one with the chequebook, you know?
^ It’s actually called ‘light cobalt’. Right. It’s in the same range as pale emerald and dark white. What it is is out of a catalogue of ‘heritage colours’ which the painter didn’t want to show me. No, no, they’re all too intense, he said. He and his crew, just by the way, are all kitted out in dazzling, one might almost say virulent, white.
** Music lesson tomorrow
*** The handbell wedding is now barely a fortnight away. I’m thinking of joining the French Foreign Legion under an alias. Can you bring hellhounds? I feel hellhounds would be an ornament to such a company.
† I can see the headlines: Small Hampshire Town Wracked By Intestinal Discord, Traced to Two Dozen Muffins at the Church Fete Teas. Perpetrator Rumoured to Have Left Town in a French Foreign Legion Direction.
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