The Muffin Man

Perhaps it is because the economic news is just too depressing -- Fannie, Freddy, and Indy all melting down, inflation is up -- that I've been musing about muffins. Simple, sweet, escape.

A great muffin is wonderful. It's a small indulgence that induces less guilt than cookies or cake. It only costs a couple of bucks (well, getting closer to $3.00 every day) and it is beautifully self-contained. The tactile experience of bottom and top are generally just different enough to make a single muffin feel like a double treat. The top is a bit crunchier and a little less dense; the bottom moister and more compact.

I hold that blueberry is the muffin flavor by which one can best judge a muffin maker. Blueberry may not be your muffin of choice, but like vanilla ice cream it has the privilege of being quintessential. You may prefer corn, cappuccino, or cinnamon but we need a single variety to stand as the yardstick. Blueberry muffins make the grade because they require the baker to balance fruit and dough and there's no hiding behind icing or other gimmicks (and, blogger's prerogative, they are my muffin of choice!).

My favorite blueberry muffins feature whole berries and plenty of them. The muffin should be moist enough not to crumble at the touch. The fruit should be distributed throughout the muffin so that there is some in every bite -- no cheating by dropping berries on top like baubles on an Easter bonnet. New York coffee shops used to feature berries that had been minced and mixed throughout the batter. These weren't bad, especially when grilled, but they can't stand up to a whole berry creation.

Most important, the muffin should be no sweeter than the berries themselves so that the flavor of the fruit dominates. The batter is like a character actor: important, but charged with completing the scene without stealing it. The muffin needn't be large. Too many muffin makers have given in to the urge to supersize their treats and often that means spreading the expensive ingredients -- the fruit -- too thin. About the size of a baseball seems right to me (also making the muffin a potent weapon in a food fight:)).

Another common mistake is to try to compensate for less fruit with more sugar. If your teeth hurt when you bit into the muffin, you know that there has been too heavy a hand with the sweetners.

Too much sweetness is something I find common at places like Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts where muffins are often delivered flash frozen to the local establishment; sweetners must keep the muffins feeling fresh long after staleness should have crept in. The compromises made in the name of cost control and supply chain efficiency result in muffins that feel artificial in the mouth. I'm sure that there are other multi-syllabic enhancements that add to the plasticity of these products. That's it these are products, muffin-like products in the way that American cheese slices are "cheese food product," not cheese. The benefits accrue to my waistline as I can't bear to eat muffins at either establishment any more.

Au Bon Pain seems to be able to balance scale with authenticity in its blueberry muffins better than most of the other chains. Their muffins are somewhat inconsistent but I did have a wonderfully fruity one yesterday.

Best of all are homemade muffins or those from stand-alone shops that bake their own. I had a wonderful blueberry corn muffin at a little roadside bakeshop in Wellfleet last weekend that was everything that a muffin should be. As in so many things, it is artisan craft and pride that bring out the best in food. Time and care create great rewards in both the baking and the eating. Ah, I think I hear the oven calling me now...

Kaffiyeh Kerfuffel (or Rachel Ray Suicide Bomber)

I first learned of the dust up over the scarf that Rachel Ray wore in a Dunkin' Donuts online ad yesterday morning on LinkedIn, the business networking site, of all places. In the "Answers" section there was a question from a branding professional asking for opinions on DD's decision to pull the ad after protests from conservative commentators. A few minutes later the anchor at Boston's WCVB-TV announced that the story about Rachel's scarf was among the most popular on its web site.

This isn't really about a silly ol' scarf; what has been classified until now is a CIA discovery that virtually all terrorists can prepare their meals in 30 minutes or less -- and how could that be possible without some covert coaching from the diva of rapid cuisine?!

DD obviously blew this one. In response to the taunts from a few shrill voices, the chain overreacted and now faces charges of racism, corporate cowardice, and serving weak iced coffee. The ad has probably been seen by more people than ever would have seen it otherwise and most of the comments I've seen online are strong protests against the donut maker. One organization has called for a worldwide boycott.

Blogs are buzzing with comments on this incident: Jake Summers, The Jawa Report, Ugly Doggy, The Conglomerate, and Lalablahblah are just a few. It's been picked up on Yahoo, Newsweek.com and other outlets. This has become a textbook example of how not to respond to hot headed criticism.

If you are going to play in the online world, you have to learn how to deal with situations like this. You are in the land of conversation, not monologue and people are going to comment positively and negatively on what you are doing. You have to know when and whether to engage. In this case, either silence or a simple clarification that the scarf wasn't a kaffiyeh but that kaffiyeh's are worn by millions of non-terrorists (some DD customers, no doubt) --without pulling the ad --would have been much more appropriate and productive for the brand. Personally, I would have sent the offending paisley scarf to Michelle Malkin -- the commentator who got much of this fired up -- with a suggestion that she wrap it around her own neck really tight.

Malkin and her fellow travelers in Arab bashing and fear mongering, nattering nabobs of negativism, to borrow a phrase from one of their conservative forebearers, must be thriled at all of the attention this story has received.

But Rachel Ray a terrorist sympathizer? Get real. She only terrorizes with her ubiquitousness and indeftatigable drive to be perky at all times. Check the lists of the top 10,000 people most likely to be abetting terrorists and you won't find her Ray-ship there except those kept by the truly delusional and paranoid.

The upside that I see is all the commentary from those of us who are appalled at all of this and who decry the racism in the equating a commonly worn garment with terrorism. Shame on Malkin. Shame on Dunkin' Donuts. I'm going to go buy a kaffiyeh and wear it out to buy coffee!