The Japanese do not seem to bake at home often. The stores have a very small supply of baking ingredients. Slowly, I have stock-piled a nice little stash of flour, sugar, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and sea salt. I found canned pumpkin at the foreign foods store in town and bought all three of their cans. A friend sent me chocolate chips. I still cannot find more than 1/4 of powdered sugar in packages at stores though.
I adapted this recipe from All Recipes, and I baked them in muffin liners without a muffin pan – I still do not have one – so they came out looking like irregular little loaves.
I took them into work, all mashed up from the bumpy bike ride that morning. I am not sure the teachers are used to ugly little homemade baked goods, instead of their beautifully packaged omiyage? They got eaten up pretty quickly, but I am still giggling about it:
I came in an hour before work to practice with recitation students and set out the muffins in the teachers room. Another teacher comes over,
“So big! I cannot eat so big a piece!” She decides to split a piece with another teacher. “I cut? I will share my big piece with other teacher.”
She ended up cutting all of them up into small bite-size pieces and setting out tiny toothpicks for people to use.
All right. I had, uh, two whole ones this morning.
Pumpkin-Ginger-Chocolate Chip Muffins
Slightly adapted from All Recipes
Makes about 16 muffins. Hard for me to tell the exact amount over here in the land of ad-hoc baking.
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup brown sugar (for sweeter muffins, add 1/4 cup granulated sugar)
- 1/4 vegetable oil
- 2 eggs, lightly beaten
- 1 cup canned pumpkin
- 1 tablespoon freshly minced ginger (optional, but I LOVE ginger)
- 1/4 water
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup chocolate chips, dusted in flour so that they don’t sink to the bottom of the muffin
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. (200 degrees C.)
2. In a medium size bowl, whisk sugar, oil, pumpkin, eggs, ginger, water, and vanilla extract.
3. In another bowl, sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt.
4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, mixing just until the flour is incorporated. Overmixing causes tough muffins.
5. Add chocolate chips. Stirring gently to distribute evenly throughout the batter.
6. Fill muffin cups 2/3 full. Bake about 20 minutes or until tops spring back when touched lightly. You can also test with a toothpick.
I absolutely loved this post and I thought it was hysterical! I am making these muffins tomorrow and I can’t wait to try them! I just posted a recipe for butternut squash muffins today. Man, I love the fall!
Oooh, we have squash over here! I will have to check out your recipe.
Hahaha… So that is where i have been going wrong, I should be slicing my muffins and sharing it out, instead of devouring the entire thing for myself. Oh.
Never thought to mix chocolate and pumpkin, but this sounds YUM!
/Camilla
I like the idea of adding ginger to these muffins. I don’t think I’ve had anything with ginger and chocolate. I think it’s pretty hilarious that they couldn’t eat a whole one. I would have been right there with you eating two.
Sounds tasty! I might have to try these this weekend.
Re: home baking in Japan: tiny movens mean baking is a pain in the ass, so home-bakers look extra cool by comparison. You can get chocolate chips at some grocery stores, but not all. Part of the “fun” of adjusting here is sorting which grocery store has what. If you have an AEON mall, they usually have a decent baking section. Also, if all else fails, Tomizawa has an online shop (http://www.tomizawa.co.jp/). You’ll need a Japanese speaker to make the order, but some of my less-fluent friends were so happy with their flour and baking section, so it might be worth it.
Muffin cups: Skip the muffin tray and get silicon muffin cups (シリコン・マフィンカップ). They’ll keep the shape better than the paper ones AND you can fit way more in at once!
AND they have these at the 100-yen shops. I have both but I like my individual cups much better.
Tiny portions: Perhpas they thought the muffins were cupcakes–breakfast muffins aren’t really a thing here. (I eat muffins at least once a week, never fear.) Or it could be that they wanted to be sure everyone in the office got some. Or they weren’t sure about how much sugar they had in them. (Americans are notorious for their sweet-tooths here.) Or they might just be a little strange.
I just made carrot cupcakes for dinner party tonight. Silicon cups worked MUCH MUCH MUCH better. Ahhhh, thank you!
And, yeah, now that I look at the pictures again. I think the “muffins” (using that term loosely, since mine looked more like free-shaped blobs) were just weird looking. I am kind of embarrassed that I brought them in to school now. Ha! I will add that to my list of embarrassing things I have done in Japan so far:)
Looks yummy!
Reblogged this on Joshua Tilt aka Prof Tilt and commented:
Nom.