If you’re anything like me, you occasionally buy unusual ingredients for a specific recipe, use what you need, and then shove the remainder of the bag into the freezer where it rattles around till kingdom come. (Confession: my freezers are a mess.) But sometimes bad habits pay off! For instance, these millet muffins.
I discovered the recipe on Ruth Reichl’s blog and immediately noted that it called for three-quarters cup of millet. Just one batch of muffins would make a serious dent on my millet stash! So I rummaged up my ancient bag of millet and whipped those muffins up.
And they were good! Kind of like corn muffins, a friend suggested, but—and this is the best part—with grains that crackle and pop between your teeth.
Ruth calls for partially crushing the millet in the blender, but I found that the cooled muffins had a mildly unpleasant sandy texture. So I made them again, this time with the millet intact (and with some whole wheat). The resulting muffins were better: fluffier and even more delightfully crackly.
I’ve taken to eating two each morning: the first one with coffee and the second one a couple hours later with a giant mug of tea.
Millet Muffins
Adapted from Ruth Reichl’s blog.
1 egg
¾ cup brown sugar
1/3 cup butter, melted
1 cup flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¾ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup sour milk or buttermilk
¾ cup millet
Cream together the egg and sugar. Beat in the melted butter.
In a separate bowl, combine the flours, baking powder and baking soda, and salt.
Briefly stir the dry ingredients into the creamed butter mixture. Stir in the sour milk and then the millet.
Promptly (if you let the batter sit, the millet will lose its crunch) divide the batter between 12 muffin tins and bake the muffins at 375 degrees for 20 minutes or until golden brown and firm to the touch. Serve warm. Leftover muffins freeze well.
This same time, years previous: this slow, wet day, Easter 2010, and homemade Parmesan.
6 Comments
Anonymous
Robin in SoCal These look delicious and wouldn't you know it I've got the odd amount of millet in the pantry too. Definitely going to make these, thanks so much
Rebecca
Those muffins are so pretty!
I think I might be a grain collector/hoarder. I have my two or three standards that I use all the time and then, yes, I know just what you mean. Got any good recipes for einkorn, fer crying out loud?
Jennifer Jo
I had to look that one up. So no. You're not going to find any help here, sorry! (Have you heard of kernza? Ruth just did a post on it—called it the "wheat of the future.")
Rebecca
Hot dawg! I knew of the work toward perennial wheat production but I thought we were decades away from grain-in-hand. This is the best news I've had in awhile. (See? Definitely odd on the subject of grain.)
Mama Pea
We love millet here, too. But I've never put it in muffins. Gonna try this recipe for sure!
Margo
oh goody – I love millet in muffins! I developed a lemon freckle muffin that uses lemon in addition to poppyseeds. But they get a little flat-topped and I'm not diligent enough to research why that is. recipe here:
http://thriftathome.blogspot.com/2012/04/lemon-poppyseed-muffins-easy-and.html
Millet is delicious, really. I love it in our hot cereal mix, but it's also really tasty cooked up plain-ish instead of rice or cous cous or quinoa.