More Millet Muffins Madame

A couple of years ago when my mom introduced me to quinoa, I thought to myself how unique it was. Now I find that it’s everywhere. So when earlier this summer I was listening to NPR and the show was explaining the benefits of millet, I thought, “This will totally be the next quinoa.” Perhaps it already is and I’m not as cultured as I consider myself to be. But I was inspired. After listening to the NPR program I bought some millet from Whole Foods in their bulk section, then put it away in the pantry and completely forgot it for the entire summer. Then a couple of weeks ago my mom was going through the pantry and took the millet out asking me what it was. I had forgotten entirely, but the voice in the back of my head said to keep it and not to throw it out. How did I remember that it was the millet I had bought after being enthralled with the NPR program? I have no idea, but it came to me one day, yet I didn’t know what to do with it. I looked around and decided to make millet muffins.

"Harvesters Resting" By Jean Francois Millet

Millet is an ancient grain that’s been around for centuries. According to Wikipedia (the encyclopedia whose main purpose is to make individuals procrastinate) archaeologists believe millet was more prevalent than rice in the prehistoric era. There are many different varieties of millet from all over the world, but India is the proud country to have the highest produce followed with West Africa. Cultures use it as a main staple item, ground up as flour, ingredient in local alcohol and additionally (again, according to Wikipedia) as bird feed, particularly for parakeets and filling for juggling beanbag. Who knew?

Millet doesn’t seem to have the same nutritional value as quinoa, but similar value to wheat, however, it doesn’t contain gluten. It’s high in B vitamins good for: healthy skin, hair and muscle tone (Heavens knows I’d like that), improved immune and nervous system function, increase the rate of metabolism and reduce the risk of pancreatic cancer whooooo!

Millet Muffins: courtesy of allrecipes.com

So here we go - millet muffins. They came out delicious. A bit sweet but I think next time I’ll put in less brown sugar. And instead of regular flour I used whole wheat flour to make it more healthy (though the amount of brown sugar that went in counter balanced the healthiness of the whole wheat flour). I think I was expecting the texture to be more like corn bread, but maybe that would have been the end result if I had ground up the millet a bit instead of roasting the grain whole. In the end the millet adds an interesting, yet appropriate crunch to the muffins. If you have a desire to make these muffins I roughly followed the recipe from this website: http://www.slashfood.com/2008/08/01/millet-muffins-from-the-metropolitan-bakery-cookbook/