First new recipe of 2007!

The first new recipe of 2007 comes from my new King Arthur Whole Grain Baking. As much as I loved baking over the holidays, I've decided that my baking needs to turn away from cookies and all that saturated fat, to something more healthful like whole grain breads and muffins and such.

Thumbing through this cookbook, I saw that it called for quite a few types of flour that I don't keep on hand, so on my last trip to Wegmans, I stocked up on a few that seemed to pop up in quite a few yummy-sounding recipes. I don't generally like to get a lot of specialty ingredients that end up being used for just one recipe and then sit around, but there were enough recipes calling for barley flour, oat flour, whole wheat pastry flour and buckwheat flour, that I felt comfortable buying them, at least as a start.

Peanut Butter Muffins

So many recipes caught my eye that it was hard to decide what to try first, but I settled on peanut butter muffins. I tried a PB muffin a while back and while it was a beautiful muffin with a nice crown and light, delicate crumb, it just didn't have much flavor. I was hopeful that this recipe would turn out better - to keep it healthier, I skipped the chocolate chips and the glaze.

The muffin rose beautifully, but unfortunately, it turned out a tad dry, but I think there is still hope. The recipe describes this as a very moist muffin, which mine as not, so I decided to weigh the flour. KA gives both cup and ounce measurements for flour and I remember reading that flours can vary greatly among between brands. Sure enough, I reached 7.5 ounces at 1 3/4 cups instead of 2 1/4 cups. So, I'm not giving up on this recipe yet - I'll try it again with less flour - and I will weigh my flour from now on - at least when a recipe provides a weight measurement.

Last night we used the Griddler to grill up some more panini. I made a sandwich version of a Caprese Salad with fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, fresh basil and a bit of olive oil and balsamic vingar. DH and the boys loved them (me too!) and were looking for more. They wanted me to make them again tonight! Sorry, the sandwich was calling my name, so there was no time to check photo quality, so I was stuck with what I got and it wasn't great. What can I say? Sometimes you have to sacrifice a good photo to actually get a chance to enjoy the food...........well worth the price.............