As I commented to
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runpunkrun after I tried their
Dairy-free Lemon Bar recipe, the bars taste good, but they differ from the unexpected canonical lemon bar in my head.
This personal canonical lemon bar has a crust more like shortbread, denser and softer at the same time, and more off-white. Filling creamier and less sweet. I have no idea where or when I had it, but the image of it is clear, complete with waxed paper under it from the bakery.
Things I have learned while experimenting with this recipe:
- I am an engineer, not a scientist. Obviously I should have changed one thing at a time and held everything else constant until I achieved what I wanted. What I did is use available ingredients and eyeball quantities and see how it turned out. At least I took some notes!
- My intuition about what to change works a lot better for the filling than the crust.
- The kind of oil matters.
- The kind of citrus matters.
- Buy an extra lemon. Not all lemons are equally juicy.
- My cat likes lemon bars. Who would have thought! I left a full pan cooling on the counter, and when I came back the top looked different... like it had been... licked???
( In detail... )If anyone has suggestions on how to get the crust more the way I want it, I'm all ears! Any gluten-free baking experiments you want to share?
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I used a box of King Arthur muffin mix and I was disappointed.
( discussion of my baking attempts... )
[EDIT: so I did make that second box. It made 18 muffins in a regular baking pan, not the 12 listed on the box. They tasted fine but they were very like cupcakes, although not quite so tender of crumb. Perfectly acceptable but I'm going to switch back to the Pamela's baking mix recipe for my muffin cravings. Make of that what you will.]
and
I've never had a bad result from Pamela's mixes, either.
Now that you mention it, I don't think I've ever understood how the Platonic ideals of "cupcake" and "muffin" differ.
Are cupcakes finer-crumb, more consistent? While muffins are the granola of baked goods?
OK, let's try an analogy.
Cupcakes are simple white bread and muffins are artisanal rye bread. That's how I experience them anyway. I guess you could also compare a nice pound cake to cupcakes and muffins to a dense fruitcake.
My expectation is for a muffin to have a bit more weight and chewiness. It doesn't necessarily need to have special inclusions like nuts, dried fruit or baking chips.
I admit to enjoying lemon poppy seed 'muffins' from a local bakery but, truly, according to this definition they're really just oversize cupcakes; a smooth tender batter with lemon flavoring and lots of poppy seed mixed in.
This is my take on the differences between cupcakes and muffins... Anyone else want to offer another idea? I make no claim I'm absolutely the expert on this and I'm curious to know what others might think.
and then
Muffins, to me, are anything that feel appropriate to eat for breakfast, but mine are generally made with whole grains and fruits, and have less fat and sugar in them. But they can still have chocolate chips, as long as they don't also have frosting. :D