Omnomicon

Okay, Recipe Round-Robin Tastebuds . . . did you get Recipe A? Did you just love it? Well, so did everyone else, and I’m so excited to announce the winner of Omnomicon’s very first Recipe Round-Robin: it’s none other than my old pal Lo of Burp! Where Food Happens fame!! Come on down, Lo, you have won your very own copy of The America’s Test Kitchen Family Baking Book.

See? Like that!

I want to thank the several other folks who entered the contest for so generously sharing their recipes. Y’all rock! Everyone had delicious descriptions of each of the recipes involved, so rest assured yours garnered some mad props in some end of the globe.

So what made this recipe so awesome? Here are some of the nice things our Tastebuds had to say:

• Muffin A was hailed as “the best blueberry muffin EVER”.
• A was fluffy, moist and very very tasty.
• This was a difficult, very delicious decision. But Recipe A is the winner in my book (er, stomach?).

And here’s what my test run of Lo’s Blueberry Pecan Muffins with Brown Sugar Topping looked like. We start with buttermilk and oil. It looks pretty cool.

If you don’t have a cup of buttermilk on hand, you can always substitute a cup of milk with a tablespoon of lemon juice, or, as I recently found out, 1 cup of yogurt. Now, clearly Lo got it right with the buttermilk, but just in case you forgot to pick up the buttermilk at the grocery store, these are things you are more likely to have already on hand.

There were blueberries, of course.

. . . and a subtle amount of pecans in the batter that is *juuuuuusssttt* enough without overdoing it.

I have to admit that I kind of messed this up just a teensy bit, though not enough to destroy the tastiness of all this (*phew!*). See, I was out of dark brown sugar, and apparently I haven’t quite mastered how to make dark brown sugar out of sugar and molasses, soo . . . my topping was a little too wet (as in, it had too much butter and not enough sugar). And because of that, I ended up with little holes into the top of my muffins. But if you use hard packed brown sugar and did it right, yours should look more like mounds of brown sugar and less like um, well . . . brown gloop on top. Like I said, this is me and NOT the recipe. So make sure yours looks like brown sugar still.

And you know, the brown sugar and pecan topping really makes this extra-special.

But in the end, it’s a blueberry muffin, and aren’t they always just totally delicious?

Lo’s Award-Winning Blueberry Pecan Muffins with Brown Sugar Topping
courtesy of Lo

2 cups flour
1 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup oil
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup fresh blueberries

1/2 cup dark brown sugar packed
3 T melted butter *(see NOTE below)
1/4 cup finely chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 375º.

Combine flour, granulated sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, and 1/2 cup pecans in large bowl.

Whisk buttermilk, oil, egg, and vanilla in small bowl. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients; stir just until combined. Gently fold in blueberries. Allow batter for 15 minutes before dividing evenly among paper-lined muffin cups.

Combine melted butter and brown sugar in a small bowl. [Aleta’s NOTE (and the only part of this not word-for-word Lo’s recipe): a lot of people have had a hard time with this crumbly topping like I did (notably, others have had no problem at all), probably from not packing sugar enough. Because brown sugar packing is an inexact process, I recommend reducing the butter 1 tbsp or eliminating altogether to prevent sunken-in tops.] Spoon 2 tsp over each muffin then sprinkle with 1 tsp of the remaining finely chopped pecans.

Bake muffins at 375º for approximately 20 minutes or until a toothpick in the center comes out clean. Cool on a rack for at least 15 minutes before serving.

nutrition summary (for 1 of about 14 muffins, with topping, real egg & all-purpose flour): 310 calories, 1g fiber, 16g fat; 7 weight watchers points

Hey, one last thing: a lot of participants said they enjoyed taste-testing and would do it again. Yay! That means my experiment was successful! That said, what do you think would be a good recipe standard for the next Recipe Round-Robin? I’m looking for the kind of thing that everyone has a recipe for. So far Twitterers have recommended things like macaroni & cheese, meatloaf and shepherd’s pie . . . keep going, what else can you think of? Leave a comment if you know just the thing, and thanks dude!

The one food category I seem to feed more than any other is Saturday Morning Brunch. There’s just something about waking up a little early at the very onset of two days of pure relaxation, heading to the kitchen, and waking up everyone in the house with tantalizing and familiar smells. And I’ve found that breakfast just seems to have the most universal appeal to anyone from anywhere and of any food preference. It brings together picky eaters, the hungover, old folks after church, Norwegians . . . and just minor alterations to the standard fare can accommodate virtually anyone. Even vegans enjoy animal-free bacon and dieters eat egg-white omelets, and those of us who normally shirk breakfast will always take the time to enjoy one on a sunny Saturday morning.

But there is one breakfast delicacy so simple and omnipresent, I’m aghast with myself that I’ve neglected it until now. And that’s pancakes.

In an attempt toward rainbow cake fan service, I envisioned a colourful stack of multi-coloured pancakes sans-food dye, dyed only by the beauty of the fruits therein contained. Unfortunately, berries, with the exception of the blue variety, all seem to impart pancake batter with a dingy grey that is anything but inspiring. However, cheddar cheese makes for bright cheerful pancakes that are not savoury, but instead taste extra-buttery, making for a nice complement to the traditional blueberry. Also, though I’ve mentioned before that buttermilk pancakes are best, my favourite recipe by far is the standard regular old milk-and-all-purpose flour variety.

Anyone reading this has likely made pancakes, and I’ve included a recipe at the bottom for reference’s sake, but I think I’ll let the pictures, largely, speak for themselves. Except I need to tell you a secret, and you’re going to hate me for telling you because it’s such a guilty little secret, but . . . the best way to make your pancakes with crispy edges and fluffy insides is . . . shortening. Yes, a smidge of trans-fat-laden shortening in the pan does the trick admirably.

I’ll interrupt the silence here for just a moment: I’ve read a few places the best way to make blueberry pancakes is to put the blueberries on top of the batter once it’s in the pan to keep the whole batter from turning blue. I have no idea why anybody could look at this and not find it absolutely beautiful.

Moving along . . .

Repeat as desired.

And finally, the shot that made it all worth it. Aren’t these stripes giddily Dr. Seuss-like?

If you don’t want pancakes right now, I just plain don’t understand you (or you just ate, which is possible).

Blueberry & Cheddar Pancakes
adapted from The JOY of Cooking

1.5 c all-purpose flour
4 tbsp sugar
1.75 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1.5 c milk (whole, lowfat, skim, it’s your call)
3 tbsp melted butter
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 c shredded sharp cheddar OR 3/4 c frozen blueberries, thawed, pressed, with juice.

Whisk or sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Whisk the milk, butter, eggs and vanilla, then add to the dry ingredients. Mix just until the flour is all moistened, then stir in cheddar or blueberries; let sit for 10-15 minutes if you can spare the time . . . it seems to make the pancakes a little fluffier.

Back to that deep dark secret, shortening, which, to reiterate, makes crispy edges whilst preserving the fluffy insides. You put a smidge, about a knifetip, in the pan between each batch and you won’t regret it. However, butter or cooking spray still does the job, though not as well.

Once the pan is hot from sitting on medium-high heat (7 for fellow gas-stovers out there), drop 1/4 c of batter for each cake. Flip when the bottom is toasty and the bubbles on top aren’t popping quite as much, then remove once the new bottom is toasty.

Serve with a smile on a sunny Saturday morning.