It's a raw, cold, rain-up-your-nose kind of weekend here in the Buckeye State. But I just waved off a nice group of GOTV volunteers with a smile and a big tray full of yummy homemade muffins. If you can't do a shift of walking, how about a shift of baking?
I've done half a dozen batches of my new favorite muffin recipe for our local volunteers, in monster and mini sizes with good results. There's nothing like having homemade food around the old field office, especially after facing a diet of pizza and subway for weeks on end. Of course, if you suck at cooking, there's also nothing like having a nice big bowl of fresh fruit walk in the door, so its easy to get that health fix while you're obsessing about precinct maps.
While I'm waiting for the chicken noodle soup for lunch to finish cooking, I thought I would post an official volunteer-tested recipe and see what other folks are hauling to their local field office.
Big Beautiful Muffins (thanks America's Test Kitchen!)
Makes 12 big muffins or 24 regular muffins
3 C flour
1 C sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 C plain/vanilla/lemon yogurt (or sour cream or buttermilk)
1/2 C milk
2 eggs
1 stick melted butter (or margarine)
Sift together dry ingredients, then make well in center.
Mix together yogurt, eggs, cooled melted butter- then stir into dry ingredients until just mixed. Fold in fruit, nuts- whatever you've got on hand.
Spoon into muffin tins to 2/3 full.
Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes (big muffins) or a bit less for smaller sizes.
I've tried out this recipe a couple of different ways over the last few weeks and haven't been able to mess it up yet- it's a very tolerant muffin recipe overall.
You can add just about anything to this recipe for flavor. Last week we tried frozen blueberries and raspberries, with lemon zest. This week I just dropped off a version with chopped cranberries & pecans, and banana & applesauce with cinnamon.
So- anybody got a good big recipe they've been using for GOTV? It's crunch time!