Quickbreads

For the quickbread unit, Table 21 baked cinnamon muffins, banana chocolate chip muffins, buttermilk biscuits, and chocolate chip scones. Each dish had varying successes. Both muffin recipes were made with a mixture of flower, sugar, butter, buttermilk, and a combination of baking soda and baking powder. Extra ingredients such as vanilla, cinnamon sugar, chocolate, and bananas were added for flavor and were not needed for the baking process. The cinnamon muffins came out well with a crispy golden brown outside and warm, fluffy inside. The use of spring-loaded scoops to portion the batter and fill both the middle and top of the muffins with cinnamon sugar added to the flavor. The banana chocolate chip muffins were also evenly portioned with the help of scoops, but they lacked the golden brown color of the cinnamon muffins. While cooked all the way through, only a few of the muffins managed to acquire the desired color for presentation. The chocolate chips and bananas were balanced well, but the bananas were too green and made the muffins almost taste sour. The buttermilk biscuits were the least successful dish made. Using the biscuit method, butter is supposed to be cut into the flower of the biscuit dough until there are split pea sized pieces of butter. When making the muffins, the butter was only as small as 1/4 size pieces because we did not split it further before using the Kitchenaid Mixer. The biscuits were a bit dense and lacked truly flaky layers because the small pieces of butter were not present to melt. The chocolate chip scones allowed a second chance using the biscuit method. Using both butter knives and a pastry cutter, we were able to cut the butter into the appropriate sized pieces, and the scones came out fluffy and golden brown.

Lilly F.