Muffin Talk

I've been experimenting with muffins a lot. The above muffins are lemon ginger muffins with trail mix. The trail mix I get has cranberries, raisins, dried pineapple cubes, almonds, and cashews.

More recently, I made some muffins with which I was trying to capture something of the season. Sakura or cherry blossom mochi is a popular treat in Japan in the spring. It's pink mochi wrapped in pickled cherry tree leaves. I thought I could use whatever presumably cherry flavouring was in the mochi to make muffins but it turns out the sakura mochi only has sugar and food colouring. The only genuine sakura flavour comes from what little seeps into it from the leaves.

Then I thought, what if I mix cherry syrup into the muffin batter? I thought at least that would make the muffins kind of pink-ish and I could make them visually recall cherry blossoms by adding white chocolate chips. I use almond milk instead of real milk and since cherry and almond is a classic pairing, I thought it might make for a good muffin all around. Well, the muffins came out more brownish than pink. The cherry flavour is really subtle, kind of an aftertaste. It needed a boost so for the next batch I added cranberries and cinnamon. I'm basically happy with the result and gave a bunch of them to my coworkers. They seem more Christmasy than spring timey, though.

X Sonnet #1835

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