the muffin column

This Week's Muffin · Plum-Cardamom, and the Question of Restraint

The plum-cardamom muffins arrived on Tuesday, which is a Tuesday sort of thing to do. I was in the bay window, as I am, and I watched the tray come out and I thought: well. Somebody has been reading.

Here is my honest assessment. The plum is excellent. It is a late-September plum, the kind that has given up on being pretty and committed instead to being good, and it goes soft in the crumb in a way that makes the whole top of the muffin sink just slightly toward the center. I approve of a sunken top. A muffin that stands at full attention is usually hiding something.

The cardamom, however, has opinions of its own, and I am not sure the two of them were properly introduced. There is a moment — the second bite, usually — where the cardamom steps forward and says something and the plum has to sit there and take it. Roy used to do the same thing with vanilla. He made jam every September, a whole weekend of it, jars lined up on the sill like a little congregation, and one year he put vanilla in the plum and I said, Roy, the plum was doing fine. He said he wanted to give it a friend. That is the difference between us. He was generous and I am correct.

I ran into Frederick by the corkboard and he said the muffins were "cinematic," which is the sort of thing he says. He has been saying it since the eighties. Eugene had no comment, but Eugene rarely does, and I respect that in a spider.

The radio was playing something with a lot of strings in it and the rain came in around four and honestly, with the rain, the cardamom made more sense. Perhaps that is the note I want to leave. This is a muffin for weather. Do not eat it on a bright day. It will seem like too much. Wait for Thursday.

I will be here.

—Doris

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

The plum-cardamom came back this week, which is how I know the season has turned regardless of what the thermometer in the bay window claims. That thermometer has been wrong since the spring. I have stopped consulting it and started consulting the muffin case, which has never once lied to me.

Let me say plainly that this is a good muffin. The plums were actual plums — dark ones, the kind that go a little jammy at the edges and leave a purple stain in the crumb like a watercolor accident. Whoever is doing the baking did not strain them into a paste. They left them in pieces. That is a decision, and it was the correct one.

The cardamom, however. We must talk about the cardamom. There is a version of this muffin, and I have had it in years past, where the cardamom sits behind the plum and waves politely. This week it came out front and did a whole number. My cousin Frederick — who claims to have been an extra in something, and who I do not press on the details — has a theory that cardamom is a spice best used the way you'd use a comma. Sparingly, and never three in a row. I think about that more than I'd like to admit.

Roy used to put cardamom in his plum jam every autumn, and every autumn I'd tell him he'd gone too far, and every autumn he'd say "Doris, you'll thank me in February." And I did, generally. So perhaps I am not the neutral party here. Perhaps I am carrying some old business into this muffin case. That's allowed. That's most of what a Sunday is for.

Eugene has taken up a new position near the corkboard, closer to the radiator, which I take as a forecast. The radio was playing something with a great deal of trumpet in it and nobody turned it down, and I did not ask them to.

Verdict: buy the plum-cardamom. Get a coffee that can stand up to it. Sit near the window and let the spice do whatever it's going to do.

—Doris

This Week's Muffin · Peach Cornmeal, and a Word About Restraint

The peach cornmeal muffin arrived Tuesday morning without any announcement, which is how the good ones always arrive. No sign on the corkboard, no fuss. Just a tray in the case and the smell doing the advertising.

I want to be careful here, because I have been accused of enthusiasm. But this is the best thing to come out of that kitchen since the spring. The cornmeal gives it a bit of grit — and I mean that as the highest compliment. A muffin should have something to say for itself. Too many of them are just cake wearing a paper cup and hoping nobody asks questions. This one has texture. It has a little crunch on the top from whatever they scattered up there, and the peaches are actual peaches, cut in pieces you can identify, not stirred into oblivion.

My late husband Roy would have gone in for this one. Roy put up peaches every August in the back kitchen, and the whole apartment smelled like syrup for a week and I complained about it every single year, and I would very much like to complain about it again. He always said you should be able to see the fruit. He was right about that and about very little else, which is a joke he would have appreciated.

Now. My one criticism, and I offer it in the spirit of improvement: they are underfilled. I don't know who is scooping, but they are scooping timidly. There is a good half inch of unclaimed real estate at the top of that paper cup. My cousin Frederick, who is not a serious person, said maybe that's on purpose. It is not on purpose. It is caution, and caution has no business in a muffin tin.

Eugene has been reworking his corner of the lobby all week, which I take as a sign of confidence in the season. The rain came through Thursday and made everything smell like the ground again. Good weather for cornmeal, if you ask me.

Get the peach one. Get two, given the portioning.

—Doris

This Week's Muffin · Chocolate-Zucchini, and the Question of Honesty

The chocolate-zucchini muffin has returned, as it does every year around the end of August, when somebody's garden gets away from them and the rest of us are asked to be gracious about it. I have been coming here long enough to recognize a vegetable in a disguise. I want that on the record before I say anything nice.

Now. It is good. I am as surprised as anyone. The crumb is dark and damp in the way you want and stubbornly refuse to admit you want, and there is enough cocoa in it that the zucchini is doing structural work rather than flavor work, which is the correct assignment for zucchini. My cousin Frederick, who will tell you he was in something once, took a bite and said "oh" in a tone I have not heard from him since the year of the good pears. That is a review.

My late husband Roy went through a period of making jam out of anything that would sit still, and one summer it was zucchini, with lemon and far too much ginger. He called it a preserve. I called it a warning. But he understood the principle, which is that a garden gives you what it gives you and the only sin is wasting it. I think about that when I see a muffin trying this hard.

Two small notes, offered in love. The chocolate chips have migrated to the bottom, which happens, but a light dusting of flour on them beforehand would fix it and I will say no more. And they are cut a touch large this week. I watched a kitten named Mortimer attempt one on Thursday and it was, frankly, a hostage situation. He got there. It took commitment.

The corkboard has a notice about somebody's lost umbrella, navy, wooden handle. I have not seen it. Eugene has not seen it either, and he sees a great deal from where he sits.

Rain expected midweek. Get one before the garden runs out and we are all back to blueberry, which is fine, which has always been fine, which is exactly the problem with fine.

—Doris

This Week's Muffin · Peach Cornmeal, and the Trouble With Ambition

The muffin this week is peach cornmeal, and I want to say at the outset that I am in favor of it. I know that is not how these columns usually begin. I am aware I have a reputation. But it is the last stretch of August, the peaches are finally doing what peaches are supposed to do, and somebody back there had the sense to put them in a batter with actual cornmeal in it instead of the polite yellow suggestion of cornmeal you get most places.

The crumb is coarse in the right way. It has grit. It reminds me of the muffins at a roadside place my late husband Roy and I used to stop at on the way north, back when he was hauling his bee equipment around every other weekend and I was expected to have opinions about frame spacing. He'd get two and eat both before we hit the second exit. I never said a word about it. That was our arrangement.

Now. My one note, and I do have one. There is a streusel on top. There did not need to be a streusel on top. A peach cornmeal muffin is already carrying a full load — the fruit, the grain, the little bit of salt that makes the whole thing work — and piling brown sugar rubble on top of it is what I would call ambition. Ambition is fine in a young person. In a muffin it is clutter. Take the streusel off and this is the best thing to come out of that kitchen since spring.

My cousin Frederick disagrees, but Frederick has told the same story about a commercial he was in for eleven years now, so consider the source.

Weather's been thick all week, the kind that makes the corkboard curl at the corners. Somebody pinned up a notice about a lost blue collar. I hope that resolves. Eugene has moved his operation to the upper left corner of the lobby window, which I take as a forecast of some kind.

Get the peach cornmeal. Scrape the top if you're a purist. I usually am.

—Doris

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