“I’m actually a terrible baker,” laughs Ellen Abernathy of Boro Bean, despite the fact that the Hopewell Borough restaurant has become known for her from-scratch muffins, selling 8 to 12 dozen of the sizable sweet treats every day, often more.
After much trial and error, she was able to come up with a recipe that provides a base batter for every of her many varieties of muffin except the banana muffins, which use a banana bread batter.
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She makes 20 lbs of batter at a time in a big mixer, and from there she can customize the recipe to make almost anything she can dream up. She worked at Thomas Sweet in Princeton making ice cream for many years, which she credits with giving her the creative touch she needs to come up with varieties like M&M and sweet potato walnut.
She uses only natural ingredients, baking them at 325 degrees for about 35 minutes in a convection oven in Boro Bean’s tiny kitchen. Kids love the M&M muffins, but Abernathy says good old blueberry outsells all the rest.
