My daughter, who’s pursuing a degree in art education at Western Washington University, occasionally sends me photos of completed assignments, just to show me what she’s been working on. Last week she sent me a self-portrait that absolutely blew me away. She’d crafted not just an accurate picture of herself but had captured, in vivid reds, pinks and sky-blues, something of her essence. In the image, she’s dressed in clothes I recognize: a red scarf and beret over a pink strawberry-pattern sweater-vest with a forest-green cardigan. She’s sipping bubble tea — you can see two boba caught in the straw — but she’s casting her ice-blue gaze straight at you, a characteristically enigmatic smile on her lips. Is she thinking of something funny? Have you amused her? Or is she just enjoying her bubble tea?
I feel so many things while looking at this picture. I remember (and still have) Annika’s very first scribbles. I was so proud of her for learning how to grasp a pen! Annika was 4 years old when I quit my job in California and we moved to Vancouver. Child care would have cost more than I could have earned at work, so I stayed home. To keep her busy and entertained, we spent a couple hours drawing every day. We’d sprawl on the floor with pens and pencils and crayons and watercolor paints and do drawing after drawing after drawing. Whatever I’d draw, she’d draw, too. I kept both our artworks from that time and they are among my dearest treasures and some are still displayed around our home.
As she grew up, she kept drawing every day. She could find inspiration anywhere: a political flyer with the face of former 17th District state Sen. Don Benton; the Irish band U2; Erin Hunter’s “Warrior Cats” novels; Rachel Renee Russell’s “Dork Diaries” books; Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi’s “Tin Tin” comic book series; and Jeff Wayne’s rock opera “War of the Worlds.”
I reveled in her creativity. It felt like kismet that she’d carry on the family tradition started by my grandfather, cartoonist Basil Wolverton, and carried on by my father, political cartoonist Monte Wolverton. Alas, I didn’t grow up to make pictures with a pen (except sporadically) but rather with a keyboard. Annika has surely felt the weight of this legacy on her shoulders and so did I. I suppose I could have studied art but instead I majored in English and couldn’t get enough credits for a minor in mass communications, so I minored in theology instead. I can read, write and tell you who Bildad the Shuhite was.
I’m so glad Annika’s doing exactly what she wants. She is genuinely excited about what she’s learned, starting with two years of art classes at Clark College and now finishing with a bachelor’s degree and teaching certificate. She hasn’t let anything sway her from her path, even under the withering condescension of a high school teacher who told her to study something practical like mechanical engineering. He must have been practicing reverse psychology because that’s when she made up her mind that a career involving art is the only career worth having, at least to her.
I was thinking of Annika while scrolling through recipes online when I came across this gem for chocolate raspberry muffins. She loves any chocolate raspberry flavor combination, so I knew she’d like these, even though she’s several hundred miles away and won’t get to taste them. Just like she tells me what she’s working on, I also let her know what I’m working on and sometimes send pictures of my own culinary “art.”
These muffins are pretty easy to make and pretty dang delicious. Just whisk together the dry ingredients, stir together the wet ingredients, mix until barely moistened (a few streaks of flour and cocoa are fine), and then fold in the frozen raspberries and chopped chocolate bar. You can use fresh raspberries, but for one thing they’re not in season and for another the fresh raspberries would get mushed in with the batter. The frozen raspberries make nice little pockets of tart fruit flavor.
A couple of additional notes: If you can’t find a chocolate bar with raspberries, use plain dark chocolate. If you don’t have raspberry yogurt, use plain yogurt or sour cream. And raspberry powder is hard to find — you can order it online or buy a bag of freeze-dried raspberries and pulverize them yourself — but it gives the muffins a really nice raspberry flavor in every bite. My final recommendation is to use paper liners because the raspberries can get stuck to the bottom of the muffin tin and no one wants that.
I did change the recipe in one way I didn’t intend to and that’s using extra-virgin olive oil instead of a milder vegetable oil, because I didn’t have any on hand. The conventional wisdom is to avoid olive oil at all costs because it may impart its strong olive flavor to your baked goods. Guess what? It didn’t ruin the muffins at all, in my opinion, but maybe that’s because I’m getting so old that my taste buds have lost their sensitivity. That’s actually very liberating, if you think about it, because now I’m free to enjoy all kinds of terrible food.
Annika has already secured a promise from me that I’ll make these for her when she comes home for spring break in a few weeks. In the meantime, I’ll just have to picture her face in my mind. Maybe she’d bite into a muffin and flash me her inscrutable Mona Lisa smile.
“Have I said something to amuse you?” I’d ask, “Or are you just enjoying your muffin?”
Chocolate Raspberry Muffins
2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
½ cup unsweetened cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons raspberry powder
1 cup raspberry yogurt
½ cup milk
½ cup vegetable oil
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla paste (or extract)
One 3.5-ounce bar of dark chocolate with raspberries (or plain dark chocolate)
1 cup frozen raspberries
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Spray a 12-cup muffin pan with nonstick spray or line with paper liners. Set aside. In a separate bowl combine the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt. Stir with a whisk. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture. In a separate bowl, combine the sour cream, milk, oil, egg and vanilla. Stir with a whisk to combine. Pour the sour cream mixture into the flour mixture. Stir with a silicone spatula just until the dry ingredients are just barely incorporated. Add in the chopped chocolate and raspberries. Continue to stir until just a few streaks of dry flour remain visible. Divide the batter evenly between the prepared muffin cups. Bake for 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool the muffins in the pan for 5 minutes then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.
