Muffin Monday: Fabulous Fargozas

Mom and Dad went away on a little mini-vacation over the weekend, so it was up to me to fix something for the church potluck. What did I make? Muffins, of course!


I had lots of mozzarella cheese on hand, so I went looking for a cheesy, savory muffin recipe on the internet. What I found were the "fabulous fargozas", and they came with two big perks:

1. They smelled-up the house in the most marvelous way while baking.
2. The church gave them rave reviews! I had several people express how lovely they tasted and ask me what was in them.

So now you're itching to make a batch of your own, right? Well, it's not hard. The most time-consuming part was grating three cups of cheese (I doubled the recipe).

Fabulous Fargozas
This recipe comes from Judi at AllRecipes.com and makes 1 dozen muffins.

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3 tablespoons white sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 tablespoon dried rosemary
• 1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 small onion, minced
• 2 teaspoons crushed garlic
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 cup milk
• 1/4 cup butter, melted

METHOD:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). If using dark-coated muffin pans, preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Grease 12 muffin cups.
2. In a large bowl, stir together flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and rosemary until the mixture is smooth and without lumps. Lightly mix in the mozzarella cheese, Parmesan cheese, onion, and garlic. In another bowl, whisk together the egg and melted butter, then whisk into the milk. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients, and pour the milk mixture into the well. Stir just to moisten, 12 to 15 full circular strokes that scrape the bottom of the bowl. The batter will look lumpy. Pour batter into the prepared muffin cups, filling them about 2/3 full.
3. Bake the muffins in the preheated oven until browned, about 25 minutes. Cool in pan for about 5 minutes before removing from the cups.

Some alterations I made: Following the advice of some cooks who had reviewed this recipe, I chose to cut down on the white sugar (doubling the recipe, I put in a little less than 1/4 cup). I also cut down on the rosemary, fearing that the potent herb would dominate the muffins (I put roughly 2 tsp. of freshly ground dried rosemary in 2 dozen muffins). The onion and garlic were mostly guesswork; I used half of a medium-large onion and four or five small cloves of garlic, then sauteed it in a pan with butter to soften them and mellow out the flavors.

I hope that you'll try your hand at these scrumptious baked goods! Tell me how they turn out :)