#17 Muffin: Restraint
Friends,
In college I spent a lot of time at coffee shops. Austin has so many of them, and now I can’t summon their names at all, just their vibes: the one by the bottom of the big Duval hill that was always crowded with grad students; the one near North Loop in an old house where I pulled an all-nighter to finish a paper about Lord Mountbatten; the one north on Duval I used to study at with my cute-but-not-good-for-me boyfriend, where I liked the baristas, but the food was so lame that I never went back after we broke up.
The one I went to most often was directly across from the dim, carpeted apartment I lived in sophomore year and spent a lot of time trying to avoid. Next to a laundromat and across the street from a subpar and overpriced supermarket, Quack’s was open late, had power outlets, and was never too crowded to find a table. I kept going there even after I moved two blocks away, to a sunny apartment with laminate floors where I lived alone and hosted a lot of dinner parties. My friends and I would meet at Quack’s every evening and park ourselves together at tables with bottomless cups of acrid coffee. They had crumbly salted oat cookies and big slices of carrot cake with thick smears of cream cheese icing that I loved to eat cold out of their refrigerated bakery case.
I hardly ever went to Quack’s in the morning, because I liked to eat exactly the same thing for breakfast every day. Unlike the names of Austin’s coffee shops, which are lost to time or Google Maps, I remember exactly what it was: Bulgarian yogurt, “35% fruit muesli” from the HEB bulk section, a dollop of apple butter, and a handful of fiber cereal. On the rare occasion I went to Quack’s in the morning, though, I often got a “Marvelous Morning Muffin,” a big brown brannish thing that looked like it was sort of healthy and tasted surprisingly delicious. In retrospect I have no idea why my eating habits were geriatric in the morning and childlike at night.
I’ve spent more time than I care to admit searching for Quack’s Marvelous Morning Muffin recipe. And perhaps it’s good I came up empty; if the recipe wasn’t perfect, I’d be upset, and if it was, I’d probably fall down some memory hole back to 2007, surrounded by high-pile carpet and a deep funk. This recipe is close, but not the same, and that’s probably for the best. I still love Quack’s; much to C’s bafflement, I insist that we go back every time we visit Austin. I order the carrot cake or the oat cookie, but never the muffin.
More soon,
HBW
Morning Glory Muffins
from King Arthur Flour
1/2 c (71g) raisins
2 c (227g) whole wheat flour
1 c (213g) brown sugar
2 t baking soda
2 t ground cinnamon
1/2 t ground ginger
1/2 t salt
2 c peeled and shredded carrots
2 Granny Smith apples, cored and shredded (you can peel them; I did not)
1/2 c (43g) unsweetened shredded coconut
1/2 c (57g) chopped pecans
1/3 c (43g) oat bran
3 large eggs
2/3 c vegetable oil*
2 t vanilla extract
1/4 c orange juice
Preheat oven to 375 F. Grease your muffin tin, or use paper liners.
Put your raisins in a small bowl and cover with hot water.
Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, spices, and salt. Add the carrots, apples, coconut, pecans, and oat bran. In a separate bowl, stir together the eggs, oil, vanilla, and orange juice. Add the wet ingredients to the dry. Drain the raisins and gently stir everything together until everything is incorporated. Bake for 25 to 28 minutes.
*I think it would be easy to substitute unsweetened applesauce for all or part of the vegetable oil; if you do this, cut the brown sugar so the muffins aren’t too sweet, and know that the muffins will go stale more quickly.