the muffin column

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