This is Marion Cunningham’s fresh ginger muffin, the best muffin I have made in memory. Possibly ever. I like muffins, but often, I wind up leaving half of the batch on the counter, uneaten, until they’re stiff and dry and I throw them away. I’m more of a scone person than a muffin person. However. I will tell you that in the less than 48 hours since I made a batch of said ginger muffins, eight of them are gone, and of those, only one was not eaten by me. If you give me another hour, a ninth might disappear.

I’ve never seen another ginger muffin, cake, cookie, or other sweet that uses the method this one does. It starts with a knob of fresh ginger root with the skin on, a perplexing and maybe even off-putting detail that, it turns out, works very well.

You mince the ginger in a food processor, and I think this is why you want that skin: without it, the ginger would probably fall apart when confronted with a whirring steel blade. The skin helps the ginger to hold its integrity, so that it reduces to small, discrete bits, not something with the consistency of a smoothie. Then you take those bits and put them in a skillet with an equal measure of sugar. The sugar melts to syrup, and warmed in that syrup, the ginger cooks just enough to lose its sting. Then you take it off the heat, add lemon zest and a little more sugar, and there it is: a lot of flavor in a small, ugly, turmeric-colored heap, ready for mixing into a bowl of batter – which, in this case, is sagely moistened with buttermilk.

The resulting muffins are tender and pale yellow and look a little like cornbread. Mine wound up with humps like madeleines, which is weird, because I’ve never been able to consistently make madeleines with humps like that. Totally unfair. Anyway, the crumb is damp and sturdy but not heavy, and if you eat them while they’re warm, you’ll find that the top has a lacy edge that gives with a crackle. That’s nice.

And then the flavor comes: that quiet, breathy, slow-building heat of fresh ginger root – more a feeling than a flavor, almost. If you eat three muffins in an afternoon, as I did yesterday, you may actually experience a burning sensation at the back of your throat, which I tell you not as a warning, but because it’s awesome. Also: I didn’t notice any obvious ginger skin as I ate, in case you wondered. I imagine it’s good fiber for the digestive tract, if you don’t mind thinking of it that way.

Having now eaten these for breakfast and dessert, I’m thinking they might make a great cupcake – maybe with lemon cream cheese frosting? If you try it, please report.