Improving on Perfection

Submitted for your approval....The Banana Crunch Muffin:

Long-time readers of this blog are well-acquainted with my love for this muffin. Hailing from The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, this culinary delight sports walnuts, bananas, and granola. It makes for an extremely hearty breakfast muffin. Some might call it - dare I say it? - the perfect muffin. My apologies to blueberry muffin fans (of which I am one myself), but I do think this muffin achieves perfection. I love to bake a batch on the weekend, and eat them all week for breakfast.

And long-time readers will also recall that I have made one modification to this muffin to make it a healthier breakfast option: I started using white whole wheat flour instead of plain AP flour. It did change the texture and color slightly, but actually made it better in my opinion. A recent kitchen experiment made me wonder if I couldn't improve it even more.

The kitchen experiment to which I refer is homemade granola. Since oatmeal is on my superfood list, I have been trying to get more of it. One of the ways to get oatmeal is to eat granola. Most store-bought granola, however, is loaded with sugar and salt, not to mention unidentifiable chemicals that somehow keep it fresh. So I thought - why not make my own? How hard could it be?

Not hard at all, I discovered. I combined a couple of recipes to land on one that uses oatmeal, almonds, walnuts, (nuts are also on the superfood list), vegetable oil, honey, cinnamon, and a touch of salt. It turned out really, really, good.

So good in fact, that I made another batch just to have enough to put in my banana crunch muffins. The cinnamon in the granola added just a little somethin'-somethin'. And I replaced one stick of melted butter (two total in the recipe) with a half a cup of vegetable oil to cut out some fat. They may have some out slightly drier, but I don't know if I would blame the oil as much as the baking time.

And so it happened that the perfect breakfast muffin just got more perfect. (If our founding fathers can say "more perfect", then so can I.)

I think I'll have another.