Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Muffins — The Smell That Fills the Kitchen When the Family Comes Home

The lake does what the lake does. The blog gets written when the words come. The Thursday soup gets ladled. The grandchildren get fed. The rhythm holds. The rhythm is, I think, the great gift of this period of life — the kids stable enough that I can settle, my own grief settled enough that I can produce, the kitchen open enough that the family can come and go. Sophie's daughter Ingrid is walking now. She walked across the kitchen and grabbed my leg and looked up at me and said "Mor" — the Swedish for grandmother. Sophie is teaching her Swedish, or as much Swedish as Sophie remembers, which is enough for the basics. Ingrid said "Mor" with the perfect Swedish O, the rounded back-of-the-mouth O that only a child still learning sounds can pronounce. I cried. Sophie cried. The dog watched us with the patience of a saint. Sophie is pregnant again. Another baby. Due next year. I will be a great-grandmother of two. The cheat sheet on the refrigerator is going to need updating. I have a small piece of graph paper taped inside the pantry door with a family tree on it. I update it after every birth, every wedding, every death. The paper is folded at the corners now and slightly yellowed at the edges. The tree has many branches. The branches keep coming. I cooked Roasted butternut squash soup this week. Butternut squash roasted until caramelized, blended with onion, garlic, ginger, vegetable stock, a splash of cream. Topped with brown butter and toasted seeds. The soup of October. Thursday at the Damiano Center: I made an extra pot of pea soup, the way Mamma taught me — yellow split peas, ham hock, onion, the whole of Sunday afternoon dedicated to its slow simmer. Gerald said, "Variety. We approve." The regulars approved too. One older woman ate three bowls and asked if she could take some home. I sent her home with a quart in a glass jar. She is bringing the jar back next Thursday. We have an arrangement. I walked to the lake on Saturday. I stood at the spot where Paul and I used to walk — the bench at the end of the lakefront trail, the one with the brass plaque about a different Paul who died in 1972. I told my Paul about the week. About the kids. About the dog. About the soup. I do not feel foolish doing this. The lake is patient. The lake has, in some real sense, become my husband by proxy. I would not have predicted this in 1988. It has turned out to be true anyway. It is enough. Paul is not here. Mamma is not here. Pappa is not here. Erik is not here. They are all here in the kitchen, in the smell, in the taste, in the wooden spoon and the bread pans and the marble slab. The dead are not where the body went. The dead are in the kitchen. I have come to think that grief is not a problem to be solved. Grief is a country. You move into it. You learn its language. You make a life there. You do not leave the country, but you also do not spend every minute thinking about the fact that you live in it. You make breakfast. You walk the dog. You write a blog post. The country is the country. You live there now. It is enough.

The soup was already spoken for — ladled and eaten and cleaned up by Thursday evening — but the kitchen still wanted to give something more that week. When Sophie told me about the new baby, when Ingrid crossed the floor and grabbed my leg and said “Mor” with that perfect Swedish O, I needed something to do with my hands and something warm to set on the counter when people came through the door. Brown butter had already been on my mind from the soup — that nutty, golden smell that fills a kitchen and makes it feel inhabited — and so I browned a pan of it again and made muffins, because some weeks call for more than one act of feeding. These are the muffins I made the week the family tree grew another branch.

Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Muffins

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 20 minutes | Total Time: 35 minutes | Servings: 12 muffins

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 large eggs, room temperature
• 3/4 cup whole milk, room temperature
• 1/4 cup plain full-fat yogurt or sour cream
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips, divided
• Flaky sea salt, for topping (optional)

Instructions

1. Brown the butter. Melt the butter in a small light-colored saucepan over medium heat, stirring frequently. Continue cooking until the butter foams, then turns golden and smells nutty, with brown specks forming on the bottom, 5—7 minutes. Pour immediately into a large mixing bowl and let cool for 10 minutes.
2. Preheat and prepare. Preheat your oven to 375°F (190°C). Line a standard 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners or grease well with butter.
3. Mix wet ingredients. Whisk the eggs, milk, yogurt, and vanilla into the cooled brown butter until smooth and fully combined.
4. Combine dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.
5. Bring together. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir gently with a rubber spatula just until no dry flour remains — do not overmix. Fold in 1 cup of the chocolate chips.
6. Fill and top. Divide the batter evenly among the prepared muffin cups, filling each about 3/4 full. Scatter the remaining 1/4 cup chocolate chips over the tops. Sprinkle with flaky salt if using.
7. Bake. Bake for 18—22 minutes, until the tops are domed and golden and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out with just a few moist crumbs. Do not overbake.
8. Cool and serve. Let the muffins rest in the tin for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack. Best eaten warm, when the chocolate is still soft and the brown butter smell still fills the kitchen.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 285 | Protein: 4g | Fat: 13g | Carbs: 38g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 195mg