Blueberry Oat Muffins

One of the things I am trying to teach the kids in our cooking together, and to be honest, trying to get better about myself, is to be comfortable experimenting in the kitchen.  To be able to cook on the fly, without a recipe, or to take a recipe you have and tweak it to either suit your tastes, or the contents of your pantry, is an excellent skill to have in the kitchen.  My wife, who is an excellent cook is really good at this.  In fact, I think she prefers to cook by instinct as opposed to breaking out a cookbook and cooking from a recipe.  She likes the creative challenge of working this way.  Inspired by her, I have become much more comfortable “using the force” when cooking, applying techniques I know well to ingredients on hand.  Sometimes working to capture classic flavor combinations and profiles that I love, sometimes letting it all hang out and shooting for something totally new.

Working this way while cooking savory dishes is one thing.  I have the occasional total failure, but for the most part, I can wing-it and end up with a pretty tasty dish for the table.  Cooking baked goods or pastries without regard to a recipe however, is just asking for trouble.  There is a real chemistry to baking that cannot be ignored, and if altered in the wrong way, will more often than not lead to poor results.  If you have the time, knowledge, and inclination to set up an honest to goodness test kitchen at home, then have at it, but know that success in developing “new” baking recipes will likely depend on your willingness to work and re-work them many times before hitting upon a winner.  If, like most people, you lack the masochistic bent required for test kitchen work, there are a few other routes you could follow to exercise your creativity.

The first is to buy a copy of Michael Ruhlman’s great new book Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking .  As its title implies, this book gives you the codes to the “chemistry” of baked goods (as well as some other things like pasta, custards and sauces), and once you have the basic ratios in hand, you are free to let your creative side loose and have some fun with adding and mixing flavors, and ingredients.  Another option if you want to get creative with your baking is to make modifications to tested recipes that you already know, while being careful to maintain the core chemistry of the original dish.

This is what my wife and I did recently to good effect when we were trying to develop a healthy muffin that we could make and freeze for a quick getaway breakfast option.  We ended up taking a recipe we had for oat and wheat germ muffins that produced cakes with a decent texture, but were lacking in flavor, with a blueberry muffin recipe that was very tasty, but lacked the nutritional value of the oat and wheat germ alternative.  It took a few tries, but the resulting muffin is a nice blend of both.  We’ll make a few batches of these at a time and freeze them.  Everyone in the family loves these, and on a rushed morning, can toss one in the microwave for 45 seconds and have a great take-away breakfast to start the day.