what makes a chunky soup a soup?

The team doesn't like their soup to be more chunky stuff than broth.  For me, 1:1 is a good chunk:broth ratio, but I have a feeling they're looking for 1:2 or even 1:3 if the broth is especially good or the chunks don't involve pasta.

When the ratio is wrong, the "soup" is regarded with (at best) thinly veiled disdain as a shallow plateful of damp vegetables.  My goal is to improvise soups that elicit cries of joy and satisfaction; the team appreciates the food I make, but the joy's not always there.  Excelsior!

muffin lab 1: canned pumpkin and crushed seeds

As part of a pantry purge, I want to use up some canned pumpkin puree.  The family doesn't really dig pumpkin pie, so I'm turning it into muffins and trying to come up with my own recipe. 

Also, T had a go at some roasted, shelled pumpkin seeds in the mortar and pestle a few days ago for fun, and I promised I would bake the resulting "meal" into some future muffins.  That future is upon us.

This recipe is an experiment based on the overall proportions of ingredients in muffin recipes in The Enchanted Broccoli Forest by Mollie Katzen as well as the proportion of pie spices to pumpkin puree in The Best Recipe from Cook's Illustrated.

• 1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup stone ground rye flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 3/4 tsp ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 1/2 cup coarsely ground shelled, toasted pumpkin seeds

Whisk dry ingredients to combine.

• 1 cup yoghurt
• 1 cup pumpkin puree
• 1 egg
• 4 tbsp brown sugar
• 3 tbsp melted sweet butter

Whisk wet ingredients together until mixture is uniform.  Combine wet and dry mixtures using as few strokes of a fork as possible.  Using ice cream scoop, distribute batter into lightly greased (I use butter) non-stick (yes, I grease it anyway) 12-muffin pan.  Sprinkle additional pumpkin seeds on top. Bake at 350F for about 20 minutes or until knife stuck in center muffin comes out clean

Result:  

Took more like 40 minutes to bake.  Smell was good.  Only muffins in outer positions were browned. Not nearly sweet enough.  A little bitter? Very moist, almost pudding like.  After cooling for 30 minutes texture had firmed up a bit but still too moist.

Discussion:

It is true that Mollie is quite conservative in her use of sweeteners (and flavour enhancers in general, including salt).  Whereas the 4 tbsp of sugar I used is only  60 ml, Cook's specifies 1/2 c (125 ml) brown sugar per cup of pumpkin puree in a pie, so maybe 6 tbsp of brown sugar and 2 tbsp fancy molasses would work better.  This comes to 8 tbsp or 24 tsp of sugar or 2 tsp per muffin, which is the same as, for example, a typical chewy-style granola bar and that really is the school-yard competition for these muffins.  I'm already taking a risk not adding chocolate chips, but I figured the Hallowe'en pumpkin angle might buy me some indulgence.

The bitter note might be the rye flour, so this will replaced with 1 cup all-purpose flour (for a total of 2 cups AP flour for 1 c puree + 1 sour dairy).  Increasing the flour should make the muffin a bit less puddingy.  I'm out of yoghurt, so I'll use 1 c whole milk + 1 tbsp lemon juice instead.

As for the salt and spices, I'll leave those as is.  I'm expecting a result more like banana bread this time.

Result of second version:

30 minutes at 350F, 2 minutes rest in the pan, 30 minutes cooling on rack.  Much better texture and still not too cakey (would need more butter and sugar to change the crumb).  Delicious...if you like gingerbread and pie spice, which I do.  Will see how the team reacts.  Team likes (ML not so much: she's the apple pie type).