A web page using a plug-in to auto-generate “related posts” created a ping-back to my previous post about how to recognize a Muffin. The web page contained a recipe for raisin bran muffins and, I assume, some ads, although I wouldn’t know because I use the free and easy-to-use AdBlock Plus plug-in for Firefox, which means I basically never see web-based advertising.

I read the recipe, and though it was worthy of critique. I should note, before I begin, that I haven’t actually made the recipe, so my critique is entirely theoretical. If you think that’ll stop me, you haven’t been reading very long.

Preheat oven to 400°F/200°C. Grease 18 standard muffin cups with butter or butter-flavored nonstick cooking spray; fill the unused cups one-third full with water to prevent warping.

Let me just start off by saying that all muffin recipes should make multiples of 12 muffins, because all muffin pans made since the beginning of history have held 12 muffins. Yes, I know there are mini-muffin tins and giant-muffin tins, but the standard muffin tin has 12 muffins. If I’m going to make 18 muffins, it’s no more trouble to make 24 and fill the second pan. Who the hell says, “12 muffins… not enough, but 24… too many! I’ll make 18!”

In a bowl, stir together the flour, bran flakes, raisins, wheat germ, baking soda, baking powder and salt.

So far so good. The dry ingredients get mixed together, per Alton’s Muffin Method.

In another bowl, using an electric mixer on medium speed or a wooden spoon, cream together the butter, brown sugar and honey until fluffy.

You may have seen the instruction, “cream together butter and sugar,” and wondered what it meant. Creaming is a process whereby sugar is gradually beaten into butter that is just barely soft, but not runny. What happens is that the sharp edges of the sugar crystals create lots and lots of tiny “seed bubbles” of air in the butter. These “seed bubbles” expand during baking to create the kind of tender, fine-grained texture of a good cake. Now then, you can cream granulated white sugar and you can cream brown sugar, but what you absolutely cannot cream is a liquid, because there are no crystals, and hence no sharp edges to create seed bubbles. And a liquid is what honey is. So right off the bat, the recipe’s author reveals a lack of understanding of what it means to “cream,” a basic baking technique. I am immediately suspicious of the recipe!

Beat in the yogurt, then the buttermilk and vanilla, until well blended and smooth.

I can’t for the life of me figure out why the recipe calls for both unflavored yogurt and buttermilk. My experience has been that the two are totally interchangeable in basically all recipes. If you were to eat or drink them by the spoonful, you could tell the difference for sure, but weight-for-weight and volume-for-volume, they bake up the same. Many times I have made biscuits with yogurt because I was out of buttermilk, or muffins with buttermilk because I was out of yogurt. My hunch is that this is an unnecessary complexity added simply to make the recipe seem more subtle and complex, or to make the recipe’s author feel like an epicurean. I doubt you could tell the difference between a muffin made with 100% buttermilk, 100% yogurt, or the yogurt/buttermilk mix called for in the recipe.

Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and add the butter mixture and the eggs.

When a recipe calls for creaming butter and sugar, it is tending towards being a cake (in this case, a cupcake). A characteristic of the creaming method is that the recipe usually goes: cream together fat(s) and sugar(s); add in liquids; add in dry ingredients in small batches. This is not arbitrary; because you’re working with a solid fat, the wet mixture will require extra mixing if you add it to the dry mixture all at once. This will form gluten, making your baked good rubbery and tough, and will also disturb all those wonderful seed bubbles that you created during the creaming step.

On the other hand, with a muffin, the fat is liquid, and so there’s no real down-side to dumping the wet mixture into the dry mixture and mixing just until they combine.

The author of this recipe, however, is confused, and doesn’t know whether he or she is making a muffin or a cake. You creamed the butter like a cake, but now you’re dumping the wet into the dry like a muffin. It’s just all wrong.

Oh, and by the way, why the hell didn’t you add the eggs in with the other wet ingredients? Why mix them in afterwards, necessitating more mixing and, hence, more gluten formation? Again, the recipe’s author seems confused. Adding the eggs slowly, separately from other wet ingredients, is characteristic of the creaming method that’s used to make most cakes, but it’s done immediately after creaming and before the introduction of the other wet ingredients. I will say this, however: if you had added the eggs to the dry ingredients before the other wet ingredients, it would have been a mess, so at least I agree with that decision.

Here’s what this recipe needs to fix itself. First, it needs to decide whether it’s making a cupcake or a muffin. If it’s a cupcake, then you should cream the butter, then add the eggs one at a time, then maybe the honey, then mix all the wet ingredients together separately and add them. Mix the dry ingredients separately and add them slowly to the wet mixture in several batches. Probably, the bran flakes should be kept out of the dry ingredients because they’re so chunky and won’t mix in well. They can be added as the last step, after all the dry ingredients have been incorporated.

On the other hand, if it’s a muffin, things get very simple. You’ll melt the butter or substitute it for an equal amount by weight of vegetable oil. Mix all the wet ingredients. Mix all the dry ingredients. Add the wet to the dry and mix just until combined.

It’s possible that there are very subtle and important reasons for this particular recipe being the way it is. It’s possible that this recipe’s author carefully tested variants of the recipe, and found that this one was definitively the best. But most of the time, there are reasons that recipes tend to follow certain paths, and recipes that deviate wildly or veer between several methods willy-nilly are often just the result of ignorant authors.