While there are no such things as "Alan-berries", I do have a friend named Alan who gives me fresh blackberries from his parents' farm. They are the sweetest & most delicious blackberries ever! He says his parents grow all sorts of fruits and veggies. I need to start getting more produce from him.
I used the first batch of blackberries he gave me to make blackberry cinnamon rolls for Wes' birthday. They turned out really well. I can't blog about them since I completely stole the recipe from the Internet and followed it step by step. This batch of blackberries will be used for muffins. My original muffins that I am literally making for the first time as I'm writing this blog.
This is my friend, Alan. He likes beer, I like beer, and we get along great. Greater than great, actually, I'd say we're thick as thieves. We used to work together at Accord Human Resources but it wasn't until after he quit that we really started to hang out. I don't know when we started this little tradition but we have a "beer on a Monday" theme to our get togethers. About once or twice a month, we'll meet up, have dinner and catch up on each other's lives. Over a few years of these Monday beer dinners, Alan has become one of my best friends.
We don't always pose and take pictures at dinner...this was his last birthday.
Dinners are usually beer and sushi on the patio with his dog, Sonja, at the Midtown GoGo Sushi. We've recently thrown pie into the mix. Fassler Hall and GoGo Sushi are walking distance from each other so why not? It'd be a shame to skip out on dessert. And Sonja loves it because she gets extra walking time and she knows she's getting a bratwurst each time she goes to Fassler.
Pretty Sonja!
I wanted to put beer into my blackberry muffins so I googled "baking with beer." Unbeknownst to me, there is a whole beer pastry movement out there. Beer cupcakes, beer breads, everything. I learned that beer is a leavening agent. One blogger told me that you can replace a cup of milk with a cup of beer as long as you add something else in to replace the fat that's in the milk. So you can use a small amount of vegetable oil plus beer instead of milk. I don't really like vegetable oil so I wouldn't do that. I would try it with shortening, though...that's if I had any, which I don't. Armed with this knowledge, I set out to my pantry. I had all the ingredients needed to make traditional muffins--flour, sugar, eggs, milk and butter. To make "Alan-berry muffins," I'm adding blackberries, beer and maple syrup.
WARNING: This recipe is completely experimental. As stated earlier, this is the very first time I've ever made it and I'm sort of making it up as I go. After making these, I will taste them and write feedback at the end of this blog. Please feel free to tweak this recipe if you have a better experience or more knowledge in baking with beer. I love comments!!
Blackberry, beer & maple muffins:
Ingredients needed- 1 1/4 cup flour
1 cup sugar
1 egg
4 tablespoons (half a stick) of butter, softened
1 teaspooon baking powder
1/4 cup milk
3/4 cup beer (I used a blonde because I hate dark beers. A few of the baking blogs I read suggested IPAs)
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1 cup blackberries
1. Beat the butter and sugar in a large bowl.
2. Add the egg and maple syrup. Mix well and then add the rest of the wet ingredients - beer and milk.
3. In a separate bowl, mix the dry ingredients together - flour and baking soda.
In case you didn't know, chopsticks are the best utensil ever.
4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix well (I used an electric mixer for all of this.) I poured the dry ingredients in little by little as I mixed.
5. Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
6. Add blackberries to the batter and mix together one last time.
7. Spoon into muffin tray or baking cups and bake for 40-45 minutes.
8. Let cool for about 5-10 minutes. Serve with maple syrup drizzled on top. Recipe makes one dozen muffins.
After tasting these, I have some recommendations:
The muffins turned out too moist for my liking. I kept them in the oven for quite a while but I felt like they never fully cooked. They reminded me of the pre-packaged Otis Spunkmeyer muffins.
Wes says the muffins taste good but there's too much wet ingredients in there. The top and sides cooked through but the middle stayed a little gooey. He could taste the beer a little bit but I couldn't. I could smell it, though, and the muffins smelled really good as they were baking.
For next time, I would add a thickening agent... maybe some corn starch or gelatin. I think I used too much beer. I could use a little less or I could use beer + more butter instead of beer + milk. That way I only have one liquid ingredient. Or maybe add a little more flour.
That's the fun in baking...it's like an experiment each time!
Wes & I had ours at breakfast with ham and eggs over the weekend. I never was a fan of breakfast (mostly because I hate waking up early on weekends) but Wes has really turned me on to it. It's his favorite meal and we have breakfast at least one day on the weekends. Married life is great : )
