Two easy muffins: blueberry oat and mini pecan pie

In my last post on St. Louis gooey butter cake I mentioned our recent driving trip to various parts of the eastern USA. One of our stops just happened to be in Louisiana pecan country in the vicinity of Natchitoches, home to our friends Ed and Chris.

One morning Chris treated us to freshly baked mini pecan pie muffins and, since I had purchased a big bag of Louisiana pecans at Little Eva’s Pecan House, I simply had to make these little babies once we arrived back home in Michigan. Being on a muffin kick, I also reviewed some of my recipe files and thought some blueberry oat muffins sounded good too. So back to the Americana themed baking table, as it were.

I had some springy tulip style muffin papers that have been stashed in with some of my miscellaneous baking stuff for awhile now. My friend Patty of Patricia’s Chocolate in Grand Haven had received them as samples from one of her suppliers and offered them to me. It was finally time to give them a whirl.

The process for both of these treats is a basic muffin mixing approach - stir the dry ingredients together in one bowl, the wet in another then stir the wet into the dry until just blended. Scoop the batter into your chosen prepared pan and bake away. Easy.

The blueberry oat batter came out pretty loose (reminded me of financier batter), so my blueberries tended to sink to the bottom. Next time I’ll partially bake the muffins, poke some blueberries into each one part way through and hope for the best. The photo below is before baking - I only had 9 of the pretty papers so I buttered and floured the other three wells and just went for it.

They baked up nicely and tasted great too! Moist, tender and oh so good.

Blueberry oat recipe: makes 12 (see followup note at end of post)
Heat oven to 400ºF. Lightly butter a standard 12 well muffin pan or line the pan with papers and butter the papers (interesting step I thought).
In a large bowl stir together 195 g (1.5 cups) whole wheat pastry flour (all purpose is fine too), 50 g (1/2 cup) toasted old fashioned oats, 100 g (packed 1/2 cup) light or dark brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 2.5 teaspoons baking powder.
In a separate bowl blend together 240 ml (1 cup) whole milk with 75 g melted and slightly cooled unsalted butter and 2 large eggs.
Blend wet ingredients into dry until just combined.
Fold in 1 cup fresh blueberries.
Portion into prepared pan, sprinkle tops with oats and raw sugar (or cinnamon sugar if you prefer).
Bake for about 20 min until golden brown and a cake tester comes out clean.
Cool about 5 minutes then remove from the pan and cool completely (or just go ahead and try one slightly warm - you won’t be disappointed!).

Next up . . . .

The pecan gems were even easier - combine brown sugar, flour, chopped pecans, mix with melted butter and egg et voilà! The batter goes into well buttered mini muffin pans and they bake for about 22-24 minutes at 350ºF. Easy again.

Pecan pie muffin recipe: makes 24 minis
Heat oven to 350ºF. Thoroughly butter a 24 well mini muffin pan.
In a medium bowl combine 200 g (1 cup packed) light or dark brown sugar, 65 g (1/2 cup) whole wheat pastry flour (all purpose is fine too) and 1 cup chopped pecans.
In a separate bowl blend 150 g (2/3 cup) melted unsalted butter with 2 large eggs, lightly beaten.
Blend wet ingredients with dry and portion into prepared pans.
Bake 22-25 minutes until fragrant, set and golden.
Cool 5-10 minutes then remove from pan to cool completely.
Enjoy!

These babies are moist with even an ooze of pecan pie-ness on the bottom. Not bad for a classic Louisiana pecan treat!

Enjoy spring and keep on baking!

Now for a quick followup on the blueberry oat - I made another batch (1.5 times the base recipe) and baked them in my individual Fat Daddio 3” diameter cake pans. First I buttered and cinnamon sugared the pans. This time I added a bit of cinnamon as well as some orange zest to the batter for a slightly different flavor profile. I portioned a tad over 3 ounces (90 -95 g) of batter into 12 of the individual cake pans. I baked them for 5 minutes at 400ºF and THEN topped each one with blueberries, raw sugar and a sprinkle of oats. I gave them another 5 minutes then reduced the temp to 385ºF and baked another 12 or so.

It worked! The blueberries didn’t sink and the cakes baked up beautifully. After just a few minutes of cooling I quickly ran a knife around the edges and popped the cakes out to cool completely.

Yippee yo-ki-yay! Until next time!!

St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake

Steve and I recently returned from an extensive driving trip through the Midwest, South, Mid-Atlantic and finally upstate New York before driving back home to Michigan through Canada along Lake Ontario. It was quite a ride let me tell you!

Our first stop was St. Louis MO to visit cousin Melissa, her husband Jeff and son Matthew. Some months back I had become aware of one of the local St. Louis food specialties, the gooey butter cake, so of course we had to try it while we were in the neighborhood.

We were directed by our lunch spot server to one of the stalwarts of the gooey butter cake industry, Gooey Louis, a very unassuming storefront that, as it turns out, held magic inside. Fortunately we arrived in mid-afternoon just in time to snag the last available cake of the day. Yippee!

Sold in a simple 9”x9” foil pan not unlike something you might see at a church bake sale, it also sported a confectioner’s sugar dusted top. The shop saleswoman advised us that it would keep for 7 days, but offered the warning that it should NOT be refrigerated - we don’t want to disturb that “gooey” top layer now do we?

I was pleasantly surprised at the flavor and texture, fearing that it would be a sugary, gooey mess. Instead I found a vanilla scented, not overly sweet, tenderly textured square that reminded me of a simple lemon bar (without the lemon) with a shortbread like crust topped with a luscious, melt-in-your mouth filling. My oh my.

The story goes that a German baker in St. Louis accidentally mixed up the quantities of butter and flour in a basic yellow cake and thus the “gooey” was born. I wasn’t able to ask the Gooey Louis baker about his approach to the cake since he had already left the shop for the day. As is my usual practice I turned to some of my baking literature as well as the internet to try to learn a bit more.

I recalled a recipe from the Holiday 2017 issue of SIFT magazine, a King Arthur Flour publication, so turned to that initially. Interestingly it includes a yeasted “cake” base topped by the gooey filling. As I searched online I found a very similar recipe on SmittenKitchen’s blog which then referred me back to the recipe printed in the NYT by Melissa Clark in 2010. Melissa notes the recipe came from Molly Killeen, a St. Louis native with a baking business in Brooklyn. Obviously it’s been around awhile.

The other recipe most prominent on internet searching was a Paula Deen version made with a boxed cake mix and a topping that included cream cheese. Thanks but no thanks.

Now it was time to try my hand at making it myself. While this type of thing is a diversion from the usual French Tarte baking projects, I figured we had just visited a decent portion of the US of A so why not go with a regional American goodie for a change, eh?

For the base: combine 7 g instant yeast, 45 g room temperature whole milk and 30 g warm water in a small bowl. Set aside while you cream 85 g room temperature unsalted butter with 45 g granulated sugar and 3/4 teaspoon salt in a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Scrape down the bowl and blend in one large egg. Add 220 g all purpose flour alternating with the milk mixture, starting and ending with the flour. Then mix at medium speed for 4-5 minutes.

Press the dough into a greased 9” x 13” pan . . . . .

and let it rise for about 2.5 hours. The dough was a bit tacky but soft and supple, and it spread easily into a layer barely 1/4” thick.

During the rise I did the mise en place for the topping, mixing it together toward the end of the rise as I also heated my convection oven to 345ºF.

For the topping: whisk together 70 g light corn syrup, 30 g (2 TBSP) water and 2.5 teaspoons vanilla extract in a small bowl. In a mixer with the paddle attachment cream 170 g unsalted butter with 300 g granulated sugar and 1/2 teaspoon salt for several minutes until light and fluffy. Blend in one large egg then add 160 g all purpose flour alternating with the corn syrup mixture, starting and ending with the flour.

After the rise the base did indeed have a more pouffy look and had pretty much doubled in volume. The topping came together beautifully like a nice cake batter.

Dollop out the topping over the base . . . . .

then spread it out gently, smoothly and evenly.

Bake for 30-45 minutes (on the shorter side for a metal pan and the longer side for glass or ceramic). The cake rises and falls in a bit of a wavy pattern and the top should be golden brown but still liquid in the center. Mine had lovely browned, ripply and wrinkly edges, a moon crater like appearance and still gooey in the center. Be prepared: it has to cool completely in the pan before dusting with confectioner’s sugar, cutting and serving.

Steve and I did our initial taste testing by cutting some edge pieces - the bottom layer came out thicker than the cake we had in St. Louis, I’m sure as a result of the yeasted dough - and the topping a lovely buttery, not too sweet mixture. We liked it! The yeasted dough seemed almost bread like, as though we had slathered a wonderful slice with that delicious top layer

We had more the following day - still gooey and good! A 9x13 pan makes a lot so I’ll be doling out some portions to neighbors and co-workers lest Steve and I demolish it all ourselves.

Here’s to a delicious St. Louis treat!