Prune and coffee muffin プルーンとコーヒーマフィン

This is my wife's binge baking again as she is making her way through the quick bread muffin section of the  "Pastries from La Brea Bakery" during the Covid-19 induced yeast shortage. It has rum-soaked prunes and ground coffee which give really nice flavor. As you can see in the picture below the muffin has a nice oversized top.

Shown below is what happened to the "runt" muffin my wife always makes specifically for me, so I will leave the others alone when I can't resist a taste. This one had barely stopped steaming before I busted into it. See the inside with lots of rum-soaked prunes.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup rum (original recipe calls for brandy)
20 soft prunes chopped up
2 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
4 tbs. finely ground coffee* (might recommend an extra tbs would further add to the coffee flavor in       the final muffin)
2 sticks (8 0z.) butting cut into cubes and frozen
1 1/2 cup plain yogurt
2 large eggs
1 tbs. vanilla extract

*This happened to be home roasted coffee beans to FullCity plus for our espresso.

Directions:
Put the prunes and rum in a measuring cup and heat gently in the microwave until just warm. Cover and leave them to soak overnight. Drain the prunes and cut into pieces. In the bowl of a food processor fitted with a blade combine the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and coffee. Pulse to incorporate the mixture. Slowly add the frozen butter pulsing until the mixture has the consistency of fine meal. Put the flour mixture in a bowl and add the prunes so they are coated with flour (this will help keep them from sinking to bottom of the resulting dough or clumping together) (#1). Mix the yogurt, eggs and vanilla. Add the yogurt mixture to the flour mixture (#2). Using a medium sized scoop put the dough into a heavily greased muffin tin (#3 & #4). Cook in a 350 degree oven for 20 to 25 minutes until they are firm to the touch and a skewer comes out clean. When they come out of the oven let them rest a few minutes (#5) then move them to a cooling rack (#6).

These are truly remarkable muffins. The coffee flavor comes through and is pleasantly surprising. As a result my wife said next time she might add a bit more coffee. The combination of rum, prunes and coffee is a perfect harmony. Even though the original recipe called for brandy we think the rum is excellent. (My wife said she doesn't know why she substituted the rum, maybe because the recipes usually call for rum when soaking dried fruit in liquor?) The texture is very moist. We will be making these again.

Cappuccino and the new frother カプチーノ

At home, we almost exclusively drink espresso or espresso-based coffee. On the weekend, we usually have cappuccinos in the morning with breakfast. In the late morning, we have macchiatos. Sometimes, in the afternoon, we have straight espressos.

We went though several iterations of espresso makers. We have been using an Italian-made basic espresso machine called Rancilio Silvia for more than 10 years. We are on the 4th and probably best model we have had. Before this one, we used Gaggia classic which also made decent espresso coffee. Silvia is a totally manual model without anything automatic or fancy. It has only one boiler so you have to wait  (probably close to 1 minute) for the boiler to heat up for steaming the milk after brewing the coffee.

It requires some effort but it does make a good espresso and also steam. It froths the milk adequately for cappuccino and latte. I have replaced and upgraded parts during the year but one advantage of owning Silvia is many 3rd party tune-up/ improvement parts in addition to the replacement parts are readily available. One noteworthy is  the flat shower screen (with flat screw head). Being an Italian machine, the screw head of the original shower screen protruded which made an indentation mark and broke the integrity of surface of the coffee pack  (since the Italian method does not make a "pack" of coffee grind but uses loose coffee when brewing espresso, this may not be a problem for them).

The frother of Silvia is a no-frill basic steam wand and requires some practice to make nice froth but the froth is not as stable or creamy as one made with a commercial espresso machine. Recently, I got a milk frother Nespresso Aeraoccino4 and it works really well. It is rather small and I have to run it twice for 2 cups of cappuccino or latte but it can make small amounts of frothed cream for macchiato. the Breville model can handle larger amounts but not a small amount of cream for macchiato.

To prevent overflowing, it is important not to overfill beyond the max line for frothing milk. It does produce a very creamy stable foam and heats up the milk nicely.

The picture below shows the pattern on the crema indicating good extraction. Silvia is very pesky to have a perfect dose and grind. I use low-speed bur grinder Rancillio Rocky grinder to get the perfect fineness of the coffee grinds. I tamp it only lightly. The machine also requires regular cleaning (back flush using a blank back flush basket with detergent - I use Cafiza) once a week and descale the machine using espresso decalcifier/descaler once a month. Since I use reverse osmosis filtered water, I do not have much of a calcium deposit problem. There are articles explaining how to make good espresso using Rancilio Silvia.

We get green beans (several espresso blends) and roast them at home (using both hot air and direct heat drum roasters) but that is for another time.