Overall, I’m pretty lucky with my recipe choices. Most of the dishes I’ve cooked since I started this blog a little over two years ago have been definite winners. Except for one instance that I can think of, the failures have involved baking. That pattern, unfortunately, continues.
As is our tradition, Ken planned to cook Tuesday’s dinner. He decided on Kentucky burgoo, a stew includes bourbon in the sauce. Traditional burgoo usually has a variety of meats, but since he’s cooking for just the two of us, Ken has eliminated the chicken he used to add, and made it as a beef stew the last few times. One of these times I will remember to take pictures as he cooks and blog the recipe.
The traditional accompaniment to burgoo is cornbread, which I’ve made when we’ve eaten this before. Full disclosure, I use a box mix (Krusteaz), because it’s just as good as my homemade cornbread, but definitely less work. This time, though, I decided to try a new recipe that had shown up recently in my email, pumpkin cornbread muffins.
The combination of flavors was intriguing. The recipe was from the Skinnytaste blog, and I’ve generally had good luck with those recipes. I had not, however, tried any of the recipes for baked goods.
I have been leery of “light” baking recipes. They often involve odd substitutions that, frankly, make me question how much the result will be like the “regular” recipe. I don’t bake that often, so I figure that the pie/cake/cookie is an occasional indulgence. This time, however, since I’d never seen another recipe for pumpkin cornbread, I went with the lightened version.
My first misgivings came when I mixed the batter. There was a lot of liquid, and the batter was very runny. Rather than sugar, it was sweetened with maple syrup. Along with milk, a little melted butter, two eggs, and the pumpkin puree, the amount of liquid looked like more than the dry ingredients could absorb. But I pressed on.
Then I poured the batter into the muffin tin. The directions were clear about being generous with cooking spray in the pan; if using paper cupcake liners, even those were to be sprayed. I opted to use silicone liners, instead, which turned out to be a good choice. The batter was supposed to make 12 muffins; I’ve never filled the pan as high as I did with this, and there was batter leftover. I crossed my fingers.
When the specified baking time was up, I pulled the tray out of the oven and stuck a toothpick into one of the muffins in the middle of the pan. Not done. Not even close. Back in the oven. Five more minutes and then the toothpick came out clean. The muffins looked fine, although they hadn’t risen as I’d expected, and they smelled wonderful.
Then came dinner time. Ken tore his muffin apart and said, “there’s something off about this.” I broke mine; there were no crumbs, and it just felt rubbery. We agreed that they tasted okay, but neither of us could quite get past the weird texture. Neither one of us wanted a second.
I wrapped up the remaining muffins, but the next day, by mutual decision, we fed them to Bertha. In Pernezny-speak, that means we put them down the garbage disposal. Bertha isn’t picky.
The only question remaining was what to have with the leftover burgoo. Then Ken asked, “why don’t you make Bisquick biscuits?” Of course! Drop biscuits using Bisquick mix are the fastest thing to bake, and a half batch is perfect for the two of us. There aren’t many things that taste as good as a biscuit hot from the oven.
So, no recipe today. I’ll get back to you when I finish cleaning up the biscuit crumbs—and I don’t mind one bit 😀
Happy eating!
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