To prove that I do sometimes enjoy food that doesn’t have to simmer for hours, here’s an inaugural Quick & Easy recipe, which we made this Sunday to enjoy with our technically 2-days-old split pea soup. Since the soup was already done, it took us 5-10 minutes to assemble and stir together the ingredients and about 10-15 more to bake them. We sliced up some fresh fruit and had a nice lunch ready with very little bother.
As you can see from the photo, the soup was reaching the optimal (to me, anyway) mashed potatoes thickness, very hearty and creamy. These muffins have a rich, buttery batter with a light sweetness that’s nicely countered by the hint of sharpness from the green onions. It works very well from with a salty, earthy soup like this one.
The original recipe called for regular onions, twice as much sugar, and lots of chopped walnuts. It was intriguing on the first bite, but too rich and cloying and distracting if you had to keep eating past that first bite. The regular onions didn’t cook very much in the short time it takes to bake them, and I had a bunch of green onions to use up, which turned out to taste and look much better. Next spring I think I’ll try these with my garlic chives from the garden, perhaps a bit less than for onions.
As we ate, one friend said she’d make these all the time as snacks if she had the recipe, they reminded her of hush puppies. They’re definitely not as unhealthy as hush puppies (which are a traditional fried corn fritter recipe more common in the South), but the quantity of butter and eggs in the batter doesn’t exactly make them healthy snack food either. Our soup was very healthy, though, so I wasn’t going to worry about a few bites of a rich bread.
Scallion Mini-Muffins
- 1 1/2 cups flour
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 cup butter (1 stick), melted
- 1 cup finely sliced scallions (green onions)
- In a medium mixing bowl, combine dry ingredients. Melt butter in another container and stir in eggs, then mix with dry ingredients to form batter. Stir in chopped onions.
- Tip: Use clean kitchen scissors to slice the green onions, especially the green tops. You may need to use a knife for the bottoms, but the tops tend to be a bit slippery and stringy, so we find this a lot faster and easier.
- Spoon batter into greased muffin cups and bake at 400 for 10-12 minutes or until muffins test done and have turned lightly golden brown around the edges. Cool for 5 minutes before removing to serve.
Yield: 3 dozen mini-muffins, 1 dozen regular muffins.
View pictures as slideshow here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ebarney/tags/tkt1409/show/
| Ingredients | Muffin Batter |
|---|---|
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| Regular Size Muffins | Mini Muffins |
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| Baked Muffins | Muffins & Soup |
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The Kitchen Tourist 
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