TWD: Great Grains Muffins

In trying to articulate my feelings about the Great Grains Muffins for this week's TWD recipe, I decided that it would be easiest to explain with a visual aid.*

If you will please refer to the above figure, it is evident that my enjoyment of a food increases proportionally to the degree to which said food resembles dessert.

In making these calculations, there are a few additional considerations. Extra weight is given for the presence of a) frosting b) chocolate ganache and c) whipped cream. Points are deducted for a) pastry cream b) excessive meringue and c) booze.

Now then. Given that my sweet tooth is the boss of me, and given that these muffins tasted fairly healthy-ish, it is safe to say that there were not my new favorite thing. Don't get me wrong--they weren't bad at all. In fact, Jason really liked them. (But that makes sense, since he's the MC Skat Kat to my Paula Abdul.)

For a healthy muffin, these performed admirably. I used whole wheat flour, spelt flour, oats, and cornmeal, and will all of that, they still stayed nice and moist for days. I tried to jazz them up with dried apricots, pistachios, and bittersweet chocolate, but I still found myself picking out the clumps of chocolate and chunks of fruit and leaving the rest of the muffin sitting around all morning.

None of this is the muffin's fault. Remember those Costco superpacks of muffins? I was the girl who always made a beeline to the double-chocolate muffins, which we all know are basically unfrosted cupcakes on steroids. I cannot be trusted to define what constitutes a delicious muffin.

So yes--these can stay earmarked as "treats to make for other people who value healthy baked goods," but as for me--I'm counting down the days until we make bread pudding (!!) next week(!!!)


*This super-scientific graph is brought to you by every single liberal arts class I took in pursuit of my English & American Studies degrees. Who says the humanities are useless?

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Pear-Pistachio Tart and a GIVEAWAY!

Wow, did this tart smack me upside the head and surprise me. I am so not a pistachio person. I don't hate them, but they're low on my list of go-to nuts, and I can't ever remember craving pistachios or pistachio flavored anything. And also, they're green. What is that about?
Imagine my surprise, then, when I fell in love with this pistachioriffic tart.
This tart had a pistachio crust (I added 1/4 c ground nuts to the dough), a pistachio pastry cream with bits of ground pistachios left in, and a topping of caramelized pistachios. I loved the triple-nut combination, and I could have been happy just eating that plain, without the poached pears on top.

I must admit, though, the pears were a nice touch. The recipe called for them to be poached in red wine, but since I don't drink wine, I poached them in a mixture of citrus rinds and crushed blackberries to give them a fruity aroma and, of course, the beautiful rose color. Here's what I didn't add: sugar. Oops! I was so caught up in squishing the berries with my hands (squeeeeeze the juiiiiiice! Bonus points if you say it in an Encino Man voice) I completely forgot the sugar. They turned out fine, although a little extra sweetness would have been nice, since these pears were not all that ripe.

Overall, though, stunning. Loved it. An elegant company dessert that can be made in advance and is fairly fast to assemble. This is the second Dorie pear tart to knock it out of the ballpark for me, I'm beginning to think the lady knows her pear desserts!

This dessert and my newfound pistachio obsession could not have come at a better time, because I have a nutty giveaway for you! The kind folks at Oh Nuts! have offered my readers a $25 gift certificate for the holidays. Have you seen their website? They offer 14 kinds of bulk pistachios, for crying out loud, and all sorts of other dried fruit, nuts, and candies.

So there are three ways to enter:

1. Go to the Oh Nuts Hanukkah gifts page or to the Christmas Nuts Gift page. Choose your favorite Hanukkah Gift or Christmas Gift and leave a comment on this blog post with the name and url of the gift you love the most.


2. Go to the oh nuts facebook page become a fan and post on the wall the url and name of your favorite Hanukkah Gift or Christmas Gift. Be sure to also write "I am here via "Cake or Death." Then leave a comment here telling me you did this.

3. On Twitter, follow @ohnuts and Tweet either: " Win a free Hanukkah Gift from http://bit.ly/6nIsCi Follow @ohnuts & Retweet to enter. " OR: “ Win a free Christmas Gift from http://bit.ly/537HNp Follow @ohnuts & Retweet to enter.” Then leave a comment here telling me you did this.

That's a total of THREE possible entries in this giveaway! The drawing closes at midnight PST on December 14th, so there's plenty of time to get commenting, facebookin', and tweetin'. G'luck!

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