Millet Muffins And Excuses

Maybe I'm not cut out for blog life, what with this "regular posting" and all. Maybe I'm just super lazy. And maybe, just maybe, it's both. In any case, I made these muffins ... a week ago? Three? And better late than never ...

Millet Muffins
Adapted from Super Natural Every Day.

2 1/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1/3 cup raw millet
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup plain yogurt
2 large eggs
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup honey
2 lemons, zested and juiced

Preheat your oven to 400 F with a rack in the top third of it. Grease a standard 12-muffin pan, or line with paper liners.

Whisk together all dry ingredients. In another bowl, after lightly beating the eggs, whisk together the remaining ingredients (the wet ones). Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and stir until the flour is just incorporated - over-stirring this will make the batter dense, making the muffins dense, making you (the assumed eater) very unhappy.

Divide batter evenly among muffin cups, leaving about 1/4 inch below the top of the pan. For me this meant making two batches. Bake 15 minutes or until muffin tops are browned and just starting to crack. Remove from oven and let cool in pan for about 5 minutes before transferring the muffins to a wire rack to cool completely.

Notes

• These were great as snack food. Lightly sweet, I quite liked them with either raspberry preserves or butter and honey. Especially if I warmed the muffin in the microwave for about 11 seconds first. 
• Heidi (this cookbook's author) notes that these go over well with the "cornbread crowd" and I can see why. If you were going to make cornbread as a side to a meal or as a component of stuffing, you may want to try these instead since millet is supposed to be super healthy or something.

Cost

• As you can surmise, this is a super quick recipe. Between mixing and making, you're only looking at a half hour. Cooling brings it up to about an hour.
• My apartment has become a Bermuda Triangle of lost receipts which, regretfully, means I can't give you an exact cost per muffin on these guys. I will say, though, that shopping in the bulk section at Whole Foods for the millet and whole wheat pastry flour will make your costs more than reasonable. Those were the only two things I had to buy and I'm confident I paid less than $5 for them.

The 348th Reason I Wish I Owned A Food Processor

Hummus. It's delicious, healthy, a great accessory for pretzel chips - so I decided to make my own. It was good, a touch sweet from the sweet potatoes (it's shocking, right?) but mostly I just kept thinking about how good it might have been had I had a food processor. I love my Osterizer blender so much: 1970s face, old-school buttons ranging from "Grate" to "Liquefy" ... it's always got my back with soups and smoothies ... but sometimes you just need a food processor. Specifically, chickpeas need a food processor or in the midst of your delightful sweet potato spread you'll find little chickpeas, bobbing around like they don't give a fuck. Well, I give a fuck. And I'd like my sweet potato hummus to be all integrated, as God and Martha Stewart's editors intended.

Sweet Potato Hummus
Adapted from Power Foods.

2 smallish sweet potatoes
1 can (15 oz) chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1/4 cup tahini
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp cumin
1 lemon, juice of
salt
pepper

Set a pot of water to boil on the stove. Peel sweet potatoes and chop into 1-inch pieces. Add to boiling water and cook until tender, about 12 minutes. Drain and set aside or put into your food processor/blender. Add remaining ingredients to mixing device. Process until hummus consistency, adding up to 2 tbsp of water if you need to. Garnish with smoked paprika, if you like.

Notes

• Using less sweet potato will mellow out the sweet potato taste; if you're just looking for a straight-up hummus recipe, omit the sweet potatoes all together and use 2 cans of chickpeas.
• As with most savories I post, this is easily tailored to your palate. I used about 1/2 tbsp of salt in mine, but you may only need a pinch. The original recipe called for 1 clove of garlic but I love that shit so I tripled it. Etc. You should feel free to do the same.
• I looked like a fool in Whole Foods trying to find the tahini. If you've never bought/seen it before, they tend to keep it near the peanut butter.
• This was actually really good; the proportions of the recipe I listed above are appropriate (at least I think so) and even though mine tasted a little less like chickpeas than I would have liked, I'm convinced it's because I couldn't blend them properly into the rest of the mixture, not because of some failing in the recipe. But maybe I'm wrong. If you make this, please leave a comment and let me know how it turns out.

Cost

• Including the time it took to cook the sweet potatoes, you're looking at about a half hour for this adventure.
• If you consider an average size container of hummus to be 10 oz (information I quickly looked up on the Sabra website), this runs about $2.85/container. The tahini was the priciest part of this (at $5) but now I have enough of it to make this recipe 15 more times.