Grancy's Cocoa Muffins

I stopped in at Murphree's Fruits and Vegetables yesterday to load up on fresh produce. I came home with field peas, butter beans, yellow squash, silver queen corn, strawberries and Sand Mountain vine ripened tomatoes. The Sand Mountain tomatoes are Alabama's answer to the Arkansas Bradley County tomatoes that I grew up on.

All of that fresh stuff just called for a batch of my grandmother's cocoa muffins. Grancy made lots of cocoa muffins, particularly during the summer when she could get fresh purple hull peas and butter beans. Poosie, my grandfather, loved to sop up the pea and bean juices with a cocoa muffin, fresh from the oven, and he always accompanied his meals with a gigantic glass of iced tea, sweet of course and with a big slice of lemon. Here's a picture of Grancy and Poosie on their 5oth Anniversary.

So I went digging into my file for the cocoa muffin recipe that Grancy wrote out for me sometime after LBeau and I married. Your basic cocoa muffin ingredients are sugar, butter, eggs, flour, cocoa, baking powder, milk and vanilla. I doubt that Grancy ever really used a recipe. She made these for so long that she just knew how to measure by feel.

 

Recipe Notes:

• "Cry. butter" is creamery butter.
• I did not sift the flour with the cocoa. I stirred the flour, cocoa and baking powder together and added it to the creamed mixture alternately with the milk.
• I increased the milk to 3/4 cup.
• I sprayed my muffin tin with a little PAM.
• 25 minutes is too long. They were done in 20 minutes.

These looked so delicious that I had to have one with a little butter and a cup of coffee right after they came out of the oven. But I'll be sharing the rest tonight with LBeau when I serve him all of that fresh produce.

Now run on over to Designs by Gollum to see what everyone else is cooking up on this Foodie Friday.