the muffin column

This Week's Muffin · Peach-Cornmeal, and I Have Feelings

Well now. This week the good people behind the counter went and made a peach-cornmeal muffin, and I want you all to sit down before I tell you how I feel about it, because I feel a great deal.

The cornmeal is the thing. It gives the whole affair a little grit — not in a bad way, mind you, but in the way a good porch has a little grit on it. Honest. The peach shows up soft and generous, like it isn't in any hurry, and there's a hum of something warm underneath. Vanilla, maybe. I asked and nobody would confirm. That's fine. A cat keeps some mysteries.

Roy would have loved this one. He was a man who fussed over his beehives every summer — waxed and patient, always coming in smelling faintly of clover — and he believed peaches were nature's way of apologizing for the heat. He'd have eaten two and pretended it was one. I knew his tricks. I let him have them.

Now, my one quibble, and I say this only because I love this place: the tops could stand to be a touch craggier. A muffin top ought to have a little architecture to it, a little cliff face. These came out gentle and rounded, like they'd been smoothed over by a committee. My cousin Frederick, who insists he once catered something famous, would call that "a missed opportunity." Frederick exaggerates. But not this time.

Still — warm, buttery, and it pairs beautifully with a gray Sunday and the low mutter of the radio. Eugene watched me eat mine from his usual corner and said nothing, which from Eugene is high praise. There was a new little fellow in the doorway too, a kitten I'm calling Mortimer until told otherwise, and he seemed impressed by the smell alone.

Get one before they're gone. Tell them Doris sent you. They'll know exactly what that means, and they'll pretend they don't.

—Doris

This Week's Muffin · Peach and Brown Butter

Well. It is July, and the peaches have arrived, and I want you to know I take that seriously.

This week's offering is a peach muffin with brown butter, and I will tell you plainly that it is one of the better things this kitchen has done all summer. The peach is real peach — not a rumor of peach, not a whisper — but actual soft, jammy fruit that gives a little when you press it, the way a good afternoon gives a little when you stop rushing it. The brown butter does that nutty, toasted thing along the edges. My cousin Frederick, who claims to know things about pastry on account of a summer he says he spent near a bakery, would call it "sophisticated." I would just call it good.

The top is where they got it right. A proper muffin needs a domed top with a bit of crackle, and this one has it. Roy used to say the same about his birdhouses — that the roof is the part people notice, so you don't skimp on the roof. He built a dozen of them one spring. Only Eugene the lobby spider ever moved into one, and he prefers the corner by the window, but the sentiment held.

My one quibble, and I offer it gently because I love this place: they are a touch shy on the salt. A pinch more would let the sweetness stand up straight. The weather has been thick and warm all week, the kind of heat that makes the radio sound lazy, and a little salt cuts right through that. Small thing. Fixable thing.

Sit in the window with one of these and a long cool drink and watch the street go by slow. That is the correct way to eat a peach muffin. A kitten named Mortimer wandered through Thursday and did not stay for one, which was his loss entirely.

Get them while the peaches are honest. They will not be for long.

—Doris

This Week's Muffin · Strawberry-Rhubarb, and a Word About Restraint

Well. The muffin this week is strawberry-rhubarb, and I will tell you right now I had my doubts. Strawberry-rhubarb is a pie. It has always been a pie. Putting it in a muffin tin felt, to me, like asking a barn cat to host a dinner party. But I was wrong, and I am big enough to say so.

The crumb is tender. The rhubarb is tart enough to wake you up but not so tart it makes your whiskers retract. There is a little raw sugar on top — coarse, the kind that crunches — and I would like to formally commend whoever made that decision. My cousin Frederick, who as you may know was an extra in something, would call it "a choice with intention." Frederick says that about everything. Frederick is exhausting. But in this case, he would be right.

I will note one small grievance. The muffins are a touch too large. I understand the impulse — generosity is a virtue — but a muffin should be a thing you can finish without commitment. My late husband Roy used to say that about his model trains, too. He'd build a layout, look at it, and quietly remove half. "If you can't take it in at a glance," he'd say, "you've put too much on the table." Roy was right about most things, and certainly about this.

Eugene the lobby spider, I should add, was unmoved by the muffin. He is on a strict diet of gnats and dignity. I respect him for it.

A small kitten — Mortimer, I think — came by yesterday and tried to eat the paper liner. I do not recommend this. The muffin is the part you want. The paper is for structure, and for handing to someone who is leaving.

Anyway. Get one before they're gone. Sit in the window. Watch the light move. That is the whole assignment.

—Doris

This Week's Muffin · Plum-Cardamom, and a Word About Restraint

The plum-cardamom muffin has returned to the case, and I want to say a few honest things about it. The cardamom is doing too much. I appreciate ambition, I do, but a muffin is not a perfume. When I lean in for a sniff and my eyes water, somebody in the kitchen has lost the thread. Frederick agrees, for what that is worth, though Frederick agrees with anyone holding a crumb.

The plum itself, however, is lovely. Tart in the right places, jammy in the others, and the little pockets where the fruit collapses into the crumb are exactly what a good Sunday muffin ought to be doing. If they would dial the spice back by a third, I think we would have something worth writing home about. Which I suppose is what I am doing.

My late husband Roy used to make a plum preserve every August — slow, low, no fuss, one cinnamon stick and that was it. He always said you should be able to taste the fruit before you taste the cook. I have thought about that line many times sitting in this window, and I think it applies to muffins as much as it applies to anything.

Eugene was on the corkboard this morning, which I took as a quiet endorsement of the weather. The radio was playing something with horns. A kitten named Mortimer came in with what I assume was his person and pressed his nose directly into the pastry glass, which I thought was rude but also, in fairness, correct.

I will be ordering the plum-cardamom again next Sunday. I am hopeful. I am always hopeful. That is the deal you make with a small cafe — you tell them when the cardamom is a bit much, and they tell you when the rain is starting, and everyone keeps coming back.

—Doris

This Week's Muffin · The Plum-Cardamom Surprise

Well. I will say I did not expect a plum-cardamom muffin in late May, but here we are, and here it is, and I have eaten two. The plums are the small purple kind, slightly tart, and whoever is back there in the kitchen had the good sense not to drown them in sugar. Cardamom is a spice you have to respect. Too little and it tastes like nothing. Too much and you are chewing soap. This week, they got it right.

The crumb is on the denser side, which I prefer. A muffin should have some structural integrity. Roy used to say the same thing about birdhouses — he made them, the year before last, out in the garage, and not one of them ever blew off the post. The man understood a load-bearing seam. A muffin is not so different, really, if you think about it long enough, which I have.

I shared a corner of mine with Frederick, my cousin, who came in unannounced as he tends to do. He claims to detect "a whisper of clove," but Frederick claims a lot of things. I tasted no clove. There may have been a faint orange zest along the top — I'd believe that — but no clove. He stuck by it. He always does.

The corkboard has a new flyer pinned crooked over the old one about the rummage sale. Someone might fix it. Someone might not. The radio was playing something with a clarinet earlier, which is a fine thing to bake to, I imagine. Eugene was in his usual spot in the lobby corner and seemed unbothered by all of it.

Anyway. Get the plum-cardamom while it is still on the chalkboard. These rotations don't last. I am told next week is something with lemon, which is fine, but this one — this one I will be thinking about on Tuesday.

—Doris

This Week's Muffin · Plum-Cardamom, and a Word About Restraint

Well. The plum-cardamom muffin is back on the case this week, and I have given it considerable thought from my usual seat by the bay window. The verdict, if you would like one from an old cat with strong feelings about stone fruit, is that it is very nearly perfect. The plum is honest. The cardamom does not get above itself. There is a small crackled top, which I find dignified.

I want to say a word about restraint, because I think this muffin understands it. There is a temptation, in baking as in conversation, to keep adding things. A streusel. A drizzle. A second spice that elbows in for no good reason. This muffin says no, thank you, I am enough. My late husband Roy used to make a fig jam every September and he had a phrase about it — "the fruit does the work, you just stand near it." I think about that phrase more than I should. It applies to muffins. It applies to a lot of things.

Now. I will note, in the interest of being fair, that Tuesday's batch was slightly underdone in the middle. I am not naming names. I am simply mentioning it because I love this place and I think honesty is a form of affection. By Thursday they had it right again. Cousin Frederick, who you will recall claims to have been an extra in something with a courtroom, stopped in and ate two without comment, which from him is a rave.

The radio was playing something with a clarinet while I worked through my second one. Eugene was, as always, holding down the lobby corner. A small striped kitten — Mortimer, I believe — wandered past the window and stared at a leaf for what I would describe as an unreasonable amount of time. It was a good morning.

If you only try one muffin this week, try this one. And try it warm. That is not a suggestion.

—Doris

This Week's Muffin · Plum-Cardamom, and a Word About Patience

Well. The plum-cardamom muffin has returned to the case this week, and I want to say at the outset that I am pleased. Pleased in the way one is pleased when a song you forgot you loved comes on the radio while you are looking at the corkboard. That kind of pleased. Quiet. Sincere.

The plums are local, or close enough to local that I am not going to argue about it. They are folded in whole — not chopped to mush — so you get a real bite of fruit when you get there, and you have to wait for it, which is the proper relationship a person should have with a piece of fruit inside a muffin. My cousin Frederick once told me that anticipation is most of flavor, and although Frederick is wrong about many things, he was right about that one.

The cardamom is generous. I will say it. Generous. Some bakers treat cardamom like it owes them money and they sprinkle in a thimble's worth and call it a day. Not here. You can smell it from two tables away, which is how I knew, before I even ordered, that this was going to be a good morning.

My late husband Roy used to bake with cardamom when he was on one of his jam tangents — he went through a stretch where everything in our kitchen was plum something, and the whole apartment smelled like a holiday that hadn't been invented yet. I thought of him this morning. Warmly. Then I thought about how the muffin tops are crackling just slightly at the edge, which is the sign of an oven run a touch hot by someone who knows what they are doing.

A small note: the kitten Mortimer was in earlier and tried to climb the pastry case. He was redirected. He will return. He always does.

In short: order it. Take your time. Sit by the window.

—Doris