Magog Traditions

This colourful 16th Century parchment apparently depicts Alexander (with a bit of help!) building a wall against Gog and Magog. Variously giants or tyrants, Gog and Magog appear in numerous texts and mythologies.

For us, they are the names attached to the local "hills" (I know, I know, mere pimples on the landscape for real mountain people, but all that the flatlands of East Anglia have to offer...). We are, however, attaching a new tradition to the Magog name, one of ethical good taste, and we are guarding it jealously.

But here's some more food for thought. Could these same hills be the real site of Troy and gazed upon by fair Helen of Troy?
Iman Wilkens in the book "Where Troy once stood" argues that Troy was located on the Gog Magog Downs here in Cambridgeshire. Hmmmm.

Mobile Muffins

It is a chilly, grey Monday morning. You struggle in to work and contemplate the week ahead. Maybe a coffee will help .... and there beside the kettle is a lovely surprise basket of Magog Muffins.

If you would like to spring a treat like this on your friends or colleagues contact us at MagogMuffins@googlemail.com and we'll see what we can do. With postal strikes upon us we are considering trialling direct delivery in Cambridge on Monday mornings.

And on the subject of mobile muffins - many, many thanks to the lovely lady who found one of our mobile phones in pieces on the path while out walking her dog today, then took the trouble to put it together and phone us. Hope you enjoy your muffins.

Red muffin day

How many muffins is enough?

Testing mixed packs of a 'baker's dozen' as relief for office overload.
So far so stress-relieving!

Two minutes to midnight feast

At Magog Muffins we signed up to Blog Action Day - bloggers around the world drawing attention to climate change as the world tries to decide what we need to do about it. We have timed this at two minutes to midnight on blog action day, as the climate clock is ticking and we are, metaphorically speaking, already at two minutes to midnight.

Our contribution is muffins with a low carbon footprint. Eggs produced within a few hundred yards of our kitchen. Flour grown and ground in our county. Butter from cows grazed in the county. Apples, carrots and whatever else is in season grown and picked from our own garden or those of friends. And where we can't source them locally our ingredients are organic and fairly traded. So enjoy your midnight muffin feast - guilt-free.

Cappuccino caressssssssssssssssss

Oh boy, are we pleased with this one. Not absolutely neccessary to combine with a creamy cappuccino, but it does make the perfect complement. A warm burst of coffee muffin, topped with a smidgeon of fragile frosting and sprinkled with a few slivers of dark chocolate.

We are confident of course in the credentials of the chocolate - dark, fairly traded and not a hint of palm oil. Confidence in the coffee was a touch more troubling - until we discovered the Coffee and Conservation blog which keeps us up to date on everything our ethical sensibilities need to know. A taster (from the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, First Sustainable Coffee Congress overview paper - imagine, a whole conference on sustainable coffee!):

"Sustainable coffee is produced on a farm with high biological diversity and low chemical inputs. It conserves resources, protects the environment, produces efficiently, competes commercially and enhances the quality of life for farmers and society as a whole."

So, guilt free pleasure is possible..... but don't get too comfortable on your caffeine cloud. Checkout how much caffeine would be 'enough' (For Magog Muffin Maestro it came out at 111.10 cups of brewed coffee taken all at once. Hmmmm, safe for now.... maybe the cappuccino muffins soften the impact anyway).

Oh, and watch out for our 'beverage beauties' planned for November.... a pack of Lemon Tea, Hot Chocolate (with traces of chilli) and Cappuccino to chase away the winter blues......

Muffin Poetry Award for Palm oil free campaigner

The forest on the left in the north of Sumatra Island is storing carbon and other ecosystem services, providing habitat for orang utans and other creatures, as well as livelihoods for people living nearby. The palm oil plantation on the right has knocked out this biodiversity, destroyed the ecoystem services and slewed the local economy.

Haiku competition panel have awarded the Muffin prize to twitterer @kusasi for his ethical content - congratulations Neil (and his palm-oil-free website)

paper overflows
sweet sponge chocolate or fruit
palm oil free goodness

Runner up is the double Haiku offered by twitterer @miametro (and her lovely photography)

you should take flavour
suggestions - PB&J
definitely yum!

or maybe perhaps
a bit more traditional
cherry almond, NOM.

Magog Muffins is struggling slightly with the concept of peanut butter and jelly flavour........ but thinking of trying this for a Fourth of July offering or in celebration of Barak Obama's Nobel Peace Prize. All flavour suggestions very welcome here in our ecokitchen - please use comment form (or tell us on twitter @MagogMuffins). If we take any up we will gladly send you a sample from the first batch out of the oven.

And that guest judge? He declined to be named this time around, but might reveal himself if we run another competition next National Poetry Day (perhaps combine with a tweet up eat up?)

Muffin haiku

National Poetry Day Haiku:






Luscious summer muse
I yearn for your sensation
sweetly on my lips.






Go on then - only 17 syllables - send us your
muffin-inspired haikus.


Free muffin for the best, as selected by Magog Muffins
plus a specialist guest judge (to be announced).

Happy National Poetry Day UK from Magog Muffins.

Ms October - Apricot & Almond

As autumnal breezes brushed away the hazy, lazy heat of the Provencal summer, Ms. October packed her bags and headed home. Ground almonds and squadgy apricots, topped with a toasted flake or two, help keep the spirit of summer alive and the encroaching winter at bay. Available to taste this week at Gog Magog Hills - together with the even hotter Stem Ginger, currently under consideration for the Ms. November title.

Nice buns? Skinny muffins? Chain stores head to head.

Goes against the grain to buy a store muffin in this household but we thought we should pit our Davids against the Goliaths and have done some selective sleuthing.











First up - "Nice Buns" (sic) 'Toffee and Banana'.

Looks: 5/5 If you like obvious & puffy.
Topping: 1/5 Toppings looked better on other varieties.
Texture: 2/5 Soft, bit dry. Crust cracks like dried mud on rugby boots.
Taste: 1/5 1st bite a surge of toffee; second bite toffee. Not a lot of banana.
Aftertaste: 0/5 Rather chemical. Think they must use artificial flavouring.










Next up - classic Starbucks 'Banana & Nut'

Looks: 4/5 Pretty much like a muffin should, but veering towards mushroom.
Topping: 1/5 A few indeterminate nuts & one slice hard, sugary dried banana.
Texture: 4/5 Lovely, crumbly, moist.
Taste: 3/5 What nuts are these?
Aftertaste: 2/5 Just a touch too much raising agent.

Web search yielded little on the composition of the 'Nice Buns', but we were anyway unconvinced. A mouthwatering display for tired drivers on the motorway, and a real sweet rush at first taste, but after that soft cardboard would give them a run for their money. (Next time will yield to son and try the chocolate varieties in case they are better and will report back).

The Starbucks mega-muffins are worth a go though. Their web site argues that they have recently responded to public pressure and gone all natural and ethical with flavourings (although we might challenge what they mean by natural and also on embedded palm oil). In the interests of research we have tried some other flavours; the breakfast muffin is all topping, but tasty; the skinny ginger looked drab but was delicious. There is a sting in the tail though - to its credit, the company provides a detailed table of nutritional content. 'Skinny muffins' are substantively lower in fat but still in the hundreds for calories and what they lose in fat they make up in sugars. One classic muffin is over 500 cals - buyer beware.