When I tell people that I’m getting a PhD in Classics, I tend to get a fairly puzzled response. Sometimes they ask, “So what are you going to do with that?” If I had a dollar for every time somebody has asked me that, I would actually be able to afford to be a humanities graduate student for the foreseeable future. But the truth is, there are definite perks. The joy of immersing yourself in humanistic study, the pleasure of helping educate young minds. Oh, and let’s not forget the free trips to Greece and Italy.
When I saw this muffin recipe, what struck me most about it was the combination of Greek flavors. Goat cheese, olive oil, honey, and figs? It’s like Greece in muffin form, only without the dirty stray cats and the impending financial collapse.
I think that the point of these muffins was to be healthy. The goat cheese was supposed to be a healthier alternative for cream cheese, the olive oil has way less saturated fat than butter, and the whole wheat flour provides extra fiber. But who cares about any of that? If I’ve learned one thing as a humanities graduate student, it’s that authorial intent doesn’t matter.
(If you’re one of my professors, and you’re reading this, just kidding! Authorial intent totally matters. Or, better yet, any reference to an ‘author’ constitutes an unnecessary fetishization of biography, and we should move from a discourse of ‘authors‘ and instead investigate about how this muffin recipe interacts with other muffin recipes. Just don’t choke on the muffin, like the bone in the throat of the real.)
Anyway, moving away from that terrifying stuff, I upped the Mediterranean factor of the original recipe by swapping in honey instead of brown sugar and adding some fresh thyme. The result was dreamily tender and fluffy. Technically chevre isn’t a Greek ingredient, but I wouldn’t really recommend replacing it with feta here. Besides, there are plenty of goats in Greece. Trust me on this.
These muffins are at their best when enjoyed warm, with a drizzle of honey and fantasies of Greek islands.
