muffins – Don's House of Fine Patisseries

December 21, 2024December 21, 2024

Making Strawberry Jam Muffins — Photos

As an effort to diversify my offerings of muffins for my mom, I learned how to make these delicious muffins containing strawberry jam, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Mom likes them so much that she declared that she likes them a lot better than both the bran muffins and the yoghurt muffins I make for her!

Note that while this recipe can be easily multiplied several times to make more muffins at once, this recipe is intentionally tailored to a half dozen muffins instead of the usual custom of a dozen muffins, since the original recipe on which it was based allows it to be halved and therefore be baked in a countertop convection oven.

In addition to this recipe, the following recipes can (usually, depending on oven size and specific dimensions) be made directly without adjustment in a countertop convection oven:

As well, here are a number of my other recipes which allow for adjusting by half to be made, or can otherwise easily be made (sometimes in shifts), in a countertop convection oven:

Making the muffins:

First, my countertop convection oven was turned on and set to 350F (yes, the photo says 86F, it’s preheating!):

Countertop convection oven turned on to be preheated

A muffin baking tin and some paper muffin liners were taken out:

Muffin baking tin and paper muffin liners taken out

Paper muffin liners were placed in each of the wells of the muffin baking tin:

Paper muffin liners placed in muffin baking tin wells

A mixing bowl, a fork, and a spoon were taken out:

Flour and a measuring cup were taken out, and some flour was measured out:

The flour was transferred to the mixing bowl:

Sugar and a measuring cup were taken out, and some sugar was measured out:

The sugar was transferred to the mixing bowl with the flour:

Baking soda and a measuring spoon were taken out, and some baking soda was measured out:

The baking soda was transferred to the mixing bowl with the flour and the sugar:

Cinnamon and a measuring spoon were taken out, and some cinnamon was measured out:

The cinnamon was transferred to the bowl with the flour, sugar, and baking soda:

Nutmeg and a measuring spoon were taken out, and some nutmeg was measured out:

The nutmeg was transferred to the mixing bowl with the flour, sugar, baking soda, and cinnamon:

Salt and a measuring spoon were taken out, and some salt was measured out:

The salt was transferred to the mixing bowl with the flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, and nutmeg:

A fork was taken out and used to mix the dry ingredients:

A box of eggs was taken out:

An egg was taken out of the box of eggs:

The egg was cracked on the edge of the mixing bowl with the dry ingredients:

Milk and a measuring cup were taken out, and some milk was measured out, but the milk was not yet transferred to the mixing bowl:

Milk taken out and measured out but not yet transferred to mixing bowl

Vegetable oil was taken out, and some oil was measured out in the measuring cup while the milk was still in it, but the milk and oil were not yet transferred to the mixing bowl:

Oil taken out and measured out but not yet transferred to mixing bowl

Strawberry jam was taken out, and some strawberry jam was measured out into the measuring cup with the milk and vegetable oil:

Strawberry jam taken out and measured out

The milk, vegetable oil, and the strawberry jam were transferred to the mixing bowl with the dry ingredients and the egg:

Milk, oil, and strawberry jam transferred to mixing bowl

The ingredients were mixed together with the fork:

The batter was transferred to the paper liners in the muffin baking tin, using a spoon:

Batter transferred to paper liners in muffin baking tin

The filled muffin baking tin was transferred to the pre-heated countertop convection oven:

Muffin baking tin with batter placed in countertop convection oven

A timer was set to 23 minutes:

While the muffins were baking, a cooling rack was taken out:

Here’s a picture of the muffins rising while baking:

At the end of the 23 minutes when the muffins were baked, the muffin baking tin with the muffins were taken out of the countertop convection oven:

Muffins taken out of countertop convection oven

The muffins were taken out of the muffin baking tin and placed on the cooling rack:

A muffin (in the case of this photo, from a subsequent batch) was taken out to serve to mom:

Mom loves these delicious muffins a lot these days!

… and I froze the rest of muffins in a freezer bag, as I did with muffins from a subsequent batch:

Extra muffins placed in freezer bag for freezing

Mom now says that these are her favourites!

October 8, 2024October 8, 2024

AI Generated Podcast About my Yoghurt Muffins Post

Note: I suggest that you read my recent post about making yoghurt muffins first for context before reading this post.

This past weekend, my brother decided to play around with the Google NotebookLM podcast generator, using my recent post about making yoghurt muffins as the podcast topic source material.

Here are the results: “Podcast 1“, the first one I listened to and chuckled at throughout (see below), and “Podcast 2“, which is longer than the first, and a slightly different approach (again, see below).

As a reference, according to Wikipedia (here’s my archive), NotebookLM is a tool by Google that has an “audio summary” feature has the “ability to condense complex documents into engaging podcasts”. As referenced in the article, some of the generated podcasts have indeed been making the rounds on at least the media local to me; the samples played on the radio had the “voices” of two artificial “hosts”, one male and one female, and appeared to greatly impress the real radio host. The real human host on the radio then proceeded to create their own samples with the tool using local news items as source material, resulting in stunningly … seemingly accurate (or at least faithful to the source material) content and banter between the two artificial “hosts”. The voices — and banter — of the artificial “hosts” that were created sounded so real that the “hosts” did not sound obviously artificial in almost any, let alone many, of the usual ways that usually betray the artificiality or synthetic nature of the voices. “They” seemed to bypass the Uncanny Valley (here’s my archive) as well, if only because they weren’t associated with artificially-created “speaking” faces or other cues that might suggest that “they” were artificial.

To wit: My brother came up with two podcasts: Podcast1, and Podcast2, based on the blog page about the yoghurt muffins: The first podcast was roughly what I would have expected, based on the samples I’d heard on the radio, in the form of “entertaining” banter from the artificial “hosts” about the overall post and subject, while the second podcast followed a play-by-play style review of the post and its pictures.

Especially while listening to the first, I was often incredulously guffawing at how “seriously” they seemed to be taking the subject, to the point of “their” calling me a perfectionist; despite, uhm, seriously having approached mounting the post with its pictures and processing the photos for presentation, as well as of course maintaining my recipe archive, and again of course being fairly serious on a hobby level about my cooking, for the overall cooking project I have always had a certain laid back, “enjoying the fun” pleasure to mounting the posts. Which, I must admit, intentionally include a lot of photos detailing usually every last step and even micro-step. I would estimate that the “hosts” got it better in the second podcast by calling me meticulous.

The end result of the two podcasts is so good that except for the knowledge that it’s totally AI generated, I would actually believe that the podcast was hosted by real people and put together by real people providing real feedback. As such, I have a few responses to some of the “comments” that the “hosts” made:

Shorter Podcast: (audio here)

I am flattered in a giggly kind of way that the “hosts” underlined the dirty oven window, which I myself had somewhat sheepishly admitted was the case in the original post;
The “hosts” seem to enthusiastically say it’s like a scientific document with no room for error; I would challenge anyone to compare the blog post against the recipe and say that the two are identical. 🙂
For the record: I did not lick the spoon. 🙂
The “hosts” spoke of how much care I took by freezing them … well, I will go into the “easy” column and say both that baking a half batch or a double batch is roughly as easy as a standard batch, and, that I often try to make recipes that are good for the freezer!
And finally … the “hosts”, in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, pretty much suggested that I make a blog post on making the morning coffee, which I may just do sometimes in the future. 🙂

Longer Podcast: (audio here)

The “hosts” asked what does “easy” mean in my claim that the muffins are easy to make, such as is it the number of ingredients, the technique, or the cleanup? “They” initially conclude “Let’s find out!” “They” then go on to point out that the use of the paper liners, and the reuse of the measuring cup used to measure out the yoghurt to then measure out the oil without cleaning it in between, as examples of the “easy” part.
The “hosts” seem to insinuate at a couple of points that the amounts of sugar and oil used are “generous”, while of course continuing to state that the muffins’ crumb would no doubt be rather moist as a result; yet, when discussing the presence of the yoghurt, the “hosts” wondered whether the yoghurt muffins were just an alternative to the bran muffins I make for my mom, but ultimately seemed to decide that it was obviously a “health angle”. I perceived this as a lack of continuity in the “creation” of the podcast. And to be clear, having adopted this recipe was simply meant to be an alternative to the bran muffins I give to my mom, which is clearly stated at the beginning of the post; further, I am not trying to “match” the sweetness of bran muffins.
The “hosts” say that the kind of yoghurt I use is not identified, ie. firm yoghurt, stirred yoghurt, or greek yoghurt, etc.; “they” are correct that the tub does not say so, at least in the view in the picture. However, “they” do read into it by saying that this lack of information is part of the “easy” claim by letting people trying the recipe to use what they have on hand. Also, “they” did not pick up on the strawberry on the tub as an example of how the “relatively plain” was intentionally a loose interpretation.
The “hosts” say that the kind of oil I used was not identified; again, the photo of the jug plainly says “vegetable oil”, which should tell all bakers that it’s generic vegetable-based cooking oil.

Is this a fun tool? Sure. My brother and I have bandied about ideas — purely in the hypothetical — about using the tool to create large numbers of podcasts that could then be syndicated to AM radio stations for the overnight slot during which a lot of content is often recycled or of what we consider to be of dubious interest.

October 3, 2024December 21, 2024

Making (Simple) (and Relatively) Plain Yoghurt Muffins — Photos

These easy to make muffins are fairly straightforward, tasty, and, despite being labeled as “plain”, the term is used somewhat loosely since the yoghurt used may be any kind of flavoured yoghurt, which will come across lightly but distinctly in the final product. As well, small amounts of fruits or other flavouring agents could be added without substantial changes.

I had originally researched the recipe to allow me to serve a different kind of muffin to my mom, in order to contrast the bran muffins she likes as well; as noted elsewhere, she enjoys the bran muffin recipe I found on the internet more than her own bran muffin recipe.

Note that this yoghurt muffin recipe lends itself well to half batches (one egg only), as well as easy and quick baking in countertop toaster-ovens.

Update 20241008: Using the Google NotebookLM podcast generator, two podcasts were produced about this post, and, I made a blog entry about the podcasts. Podcast1 Podcast2

Making the muffins:

First, the oven was pre-heated to 350F:

A tray of muffin moulds, and correspondingly sized paper liners, were taken out:

Muffin moulds and paper liners taken out

The moulds were each lined with paper muffin liners:

The lined baking tray was put aside, and a mixing bowl, a spoon, and a fork were taken out:

Flour and a measuring cup were taken out:

The measuring cup was filled with flour:

The flour was transferred to the mixing bowl:

Sugar was taken out, and the measuring cup was taken out again:

Sugar was measured out:

The sugar was transferred to the mixing bowl with the flour:

Sugar transferred to mixing bowl with flour

Baking powder and measuring spoons were taken out:

Baking powder and measuring spoons taken out

Baking powder was measured out:

The baking powder was added to the flour and sugar in the mixing bowl:

Salt and measuring spoons were taken out:

Salt was measured out:

The salt added to the flour, sugar, and baking powder:

Using the fork, the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt were thoroughly mixed:

Flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt thoroughly mixed with fork

A tub of yoghurt and a measuring cup were taken out:

Yoghurt was measured out:

The yoghurt was transferred to the bowl with the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt:

Yoghurt transferred to bowl of flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt

Yoghurt transferred to bowl of flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt, with spoon added

Vegetable oil was taken out, and the measuring cup used for the yoghurt was reused, without needing to clean it since I’d only just used it moments before for the yoghurt :