The Monthly Recipe Challenge

[Mike Nolan]

Here's a new category to discuss the monthly recipe challenge project. It doesn't have to be a recipe out of a cookbook you own if it can be found online.

I suggest that we start in November with a savory item (side dish or bread) that could accompany Thanksgiving dinner. That's far enough away that it gives whoever's first up some time to do any necessary research.

In December let's do something for the cookie/sweets Christmas platter.

January would be a savory main dish.

February another sweet item, for Valentines Day, we may need to start that one a little early.

March - a bread you haven't made before. (Maybe Injera?)

My first preference would be the January main dish. Who wants to tackle November or December?

Spread the word

      

  

  

[Mike Nolan]

The response to this post is disappointing. Doesn't anybody want to step forward and say, "I'll do November"?

[BakerAunt]

I wonder if we are perhaps being a little too organized with the challenge. Could we leave the category open? Could we just have whoever wants to do that challenge that month rather than a designated person each month?

[Mike Nolan]

I'm OK with that, but someone still needs to step forward and say they're doing something (including picking a category) for November. 🙂

[RiversideLen]

How is this supposed to work? Once we make a dish, do we share the recipe, post pics of it or just report that we made it and give our review?

[Mike Nolan]

I think the original concept was someone picks a recipe they have NOT done, makes it available to everybody else and then we all try it and share our results--what worked, what didn't, what we tinkered with, etc. (With our keto regimen, there are few recipes that I haven't had to tinker with to make keto-friendlier.)

Other concepts are also feasible. Make suggestions and let's see how others feel about it.

[RiversideLen]

Let's start with October as this is an easy recipe. It's from the book Muffins, Sixty Sweet and Savory Recipes by Elizabeth Alston, copyright 1985. I don't remember buying this book and have never made anything from it. Here it is.

SPICY SOUR CREAM RAISIN MUFFINS

2 large EGGS
½ cup SOUR CREAM
½ cup MILK
2 tablespoons INSTANT COFFEE granules
3/4 cup RAISINS
1 ½ cups ALL PURPOSE FLOUR
½ cups plus 1 tablespoon OLD FASHIONED OATS
½ cup GRANULATED SUGAR
2 teaspoons BAKING POWDER
½ teaspoon each ground CLOVES, CINNAMON, ALLSPICE

Preheat oven to 375f, grease muffin tins or use paper liners. Yield is 12 muffins.

Put Eggs, Sour Cream, Milk and Instant Coffee in a bowl, whisk until well blended, stir in Raisins and let stand about 5 minutes.

In a large bowl, mix Flour, ½ cup Oats, Sugar, Baking Powder and Spices. Add the liquid mixture to the dry ingredients and fold with a spatula just until the dry ingredients are moistened.

Scoop batter into muffin tins, sprinkle with the 1 tablespoon Oats. Bake 20 - 23 minutes or until browned and springy to the touch in the center. Serve immediately.

I plan to make this soon and will report back. I'll also drop this recipe in the recipe forum.

[Mike Nolan]

I put the recipe into Carb Manager (I'm using both that and Nutritionix these days, Carb Manager has a more readily accessible food library, though it appears to have both user-entered foods and curated ones. IMHO it is a bit harder to use, and the recipe manager is a tad clumsy as there's no cut-and-paste option to build a recipe like in Nutritionix.)

Unmodified, it comes out per muffin (yield of 12) as:

31.8 total carbs, 1.5 fiber, 30.3 net carbs
4.1 grams protein
3.4 grams fat
171 calories

A mini-muffin is usually about 1/4 the size of a full muffin, so that'd be around 8 total carbs per mini-muffin, pretty similar to what banana muffins come in at.

Thinking about tweaking the recipe, as we are not coffee drinkers, I'd probably leave that out, maybe increase the cinnamon.

If I use carbalose and allulose instead of flour and sugar, that cuts total carbs (disregarding allulose) to 4.2 and net carbs (subtracting fiber) to 3.1

What I'm leaning towards is making a batch as mini-muffins leaving out the coffee but otherwise unchanged. Then if we like those I may play with the keto-friendly recipe a bit.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm hoping to try this recipe over the weekend.

[BakerAunt]

I don't have instant coffee in the house, as I am a French Press gal. However, I do have espresso powder, so I would substitute some of it. I would also need to substitute Greek yogurt for sour cream, which we do not use.

That's a great muffin cookbook, Len. I am pretty sure that I have it on my shelf.

[RiversideLen]

I'm trying to figure out why the recipe calls for the coffee granules. Does the coffee flavor compliment the spices? I have a jar of decaf instant coffee so I'll find out soon.

I normally don't have sour cream on hand, I was thinking about using Greek yogurt but I bought a container of light sour cream as I don't want to make too many changes in my first attempt at this recipe. I find it interesting that it doesn't call for any oil or butter, the fat comes from the sour cream, so that also influenced my decision to get some.

[Mike Nolan]

Coffee goes well with quite a few spices, but only if you like coffee. 🙂

Personally, I think coffee ruins the taste of chocolate, but a lot of people say it enhances the flavor of chocolate. (My guess is they also like coffee.) However, I also think chocolate and prune puree go well together in something like a ganache, so people probably think I'm just weird.

I think the clove might be a bit on the heavy side, I'm inclined to cut it in half. I usually use a ratio of 1 part clove to 4 parts cinnamon in things like Hot Cross Buns.

Clove, cinnamon and allspice are often paired together, nutmeg is a 4th spice that is often included, ginger sometimes is added as well, although I think it takes the whole spice blend in a different direction, as does cardamom.

[BakerAunt]

My favorite coffee blends have a chocolate taste.

[navlys]

I don't like raisins in my muffins. I thought we would try a recipe we never made before from a cookbook we own and then report on it and share it if it is good.

[Mike Nolan]

navlys wrote:

I thought we would try a recipe we never made before from a cookbook we own and then report on it and share it if it is good.

Nothing says we have to limit ourselves (as a group) to one recipe per month. Pick one and go with it!

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