Muffin Round-Up

Looking back at all the drafts I've written to be published, it occurs to me that I have far too many muffins.

Well, that's a lie. Far too many muffins that I haven't shared. Even after the insane amount of baking I did for Christmas, I don't think there's such a thing as too many muffins.

Instead of writing full entries for each of them, I'm just gonna share a few quick pictures and my thoughts on them. Maybe that'll motivate me to finally get the rest of my old entries up so I can start sharing new stuff again. Like the buffalo chicken calzones I made recently. Oh god, why did I wait so long to make those?

First up: Coconut Jam Muffins, from Los Angeles Times. They're definitely dessert muffins, since they're pretty darn sweet. Surprisingly, even my friends who didn't like coconut liked these. I think it's probably because they have oatmeal too, because oatmeal does magic things to muffins.


Whole Grain Pumpkin muffins from Other Side of Fifty, which I sadly didn't take a picture of. They didn't look too pretty. I also doubled the batch to use all the pumpkin I had left, and ate these for almost a month and a half. As someone who's always disliked pumpkin pie, I thought that was a pretty big feat.

Morning Glory Muffins from Joy of Baking. I didn't get a picture of these either, but with a much more reasonable excuse. I made these the morning of Run For Your Lives, which is a zombie-themed 5k. We got up super early to drive to the race, and I decided that really nutricious muffins would be great, and someone suggested carrot. So I went all out and made Morning Glory muffins. There are no pictures of these because they were all completely demolished the night I made them, including the extra ones I left at my house. I'd highly recommend trying them.

Raspberry Lemon muffins from Coco Bean. Despite my making these more than six months ago, I remember them extremely well. I really liked the flavor, but I didn't do a great job with the zest, so there were long strands of lemon throughout the muffins that weren't really enjoyable to chew on. If it hadn't been for that, I think they would have been perfect.


Honey Cornbread muffins from A Farmgirl's Dabbles. I made these to pair with jambalaya, so I could watch the Princess and the Frog and have fitting food (never mind that they actually eat jumbo in that movie.), and they were great. Not overly sweet, but sweet enough that I think with a little jam they'd be a perfect dessert. Thinking about them makes me sad I gave the rest away...

Chocolate Cherry muffins from Stolen Moments. I don't think I even need to say much about these. Just look at the name and ingredient list. Chocolate muffins are great, and then add cherries? They were amazing.

Apple Cinnamon muffins from Southern, eh? I have a thing for apple and cinnamon. I love them. Next time I make these I'm going to put a bit more cinnamon in them, but otherwise they were great. They're also surprisingly low calorie.

And now for the Christmas muffins.

White and Purple Amaretto muffins, modified from I Love Muffins. Instead of having any chocolate I just made extra batter and died some of it purple. I wasn't a big fan of these, but I think the texture difference the chocolate would have provided would probably have alleviated most of my complains about them. I also just didn't find them terribly flavorful, since I didn't add anything to compensate.


Strawberry Cinnamon Sugar muffins from Eggs on Sunday. I added some food coloring to make the batter pink, and also put pink sugar sparkles on top, just in case it wasn't sweet enough before. They were quite good, although I wish strawberry flavoring would come through more in baking. Maybe if a large number of strawberries were pureed....


I would actually call these cupcakes, honestly.... and we didn't take a picture of any of them, but they're rainbow muffins! I had a lot of help with these, and they did a bunch better job at making them even than I probably would have.... making the rainbow cake was frustrating enough for me.


Here's a picture of all the muffins (well... half of the muffins. There were five tins in the end):


There are four muffins in there I didn't take pictures of individually: blueberry from Obsessed with Baking (which I've made before and are always a huge hit), another version of Cinnamon Sugar muffins, banana muffins from Melbourne Food Files, and my personal favorite, apple butterscotch from Annie's Eats. I could have easily eaten all of the butterscotch ones on my own, and probably would have if there hadn't been people in the kitchen with me.

Okay, there's one more muffin I didn't share with you guys, because they were special. I also liked the pictures I took of them enough that I think they deserve their own post. So while the world may be almost caught up on my muffin adventures, bear in mind that I just ate the last of the banana muffins, so the time for more is rapidly approaching....

Christmas Baking

Four dozen cookies, two pounds of candied almonds, and about ten dozen muffins, all baked in two days. The complete list:

Candied Almonds

Green Tea Cookies

Modified these into Chocolate Blackberry Cookies

Russian Tea Cookies

Carrot Cake Cookies

Blueberry Muffins

Strawberry Cinnamon Sugar Muffins

White Amaretto Muffins

Rainbow Cupcakes

Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal Butterscotch Muffins (which are possibly my favorite)

Cinnamon Sugar Muffins

It took hours and would not have been possible without a lot of help, but they all came together, and I think everyone liked everything.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

"You're making old person muffins?"

In case you couldn't tell, I'm making a bit of an effort to start updating sort of regularly again. I'm not going to promise any sort of schedule, because this blog is supposed to be for fun, and schedules stress me out. I'll be sharing a lot of older stuff for a while- stuff I made and didn't share because I was too lazy to type.

These may be the first muffins I've made that I didn't like.

I made these thinking that I wouldn't really like them. Hoping, but thinking 'wow, these certainly sound... interesting, I hope they're good...' Mama Bird looked at the recipe and assured me that if I didn't like them, she'd eat them. So I decided to be brave and to try it. I like new food, right?



They don't even really look good.

I tried to like them, and I did eat two before I gave up and declared that they were all for Mama Bird. She did eat them all, to her credit, but I don't know how she did it. I'll be sticking to sweeter muffins from now on.

Recipe from Teaspot NYC.

2 cups applesauce

2 ounces dates

1 cup wheat bran

1/2 cup buttermilk

1 large egg

2 tablespoons honey

3/4 teaspoon ginger

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

5/8 cups all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons ground flaxseed

1.25 teaspoons baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon allspice

1/4 cup old-fashioned oats

1. Preheat oven to 375.
   
2. Heat applesauce and dates over medium heat, stirring frequently, until mixture is reduced to about 1.25 cups, or 15-20 minutes.
   
3. Remove from heat and let cool completely.
   
4. Transfer applesauce to bowl, and mix in bran, buttermilk, egg, honey, ginger, and vanilla.
   
5. In separate bowl, mix flour, flaxseed, baking soda, salt, allspice, and 1/4 cup oats.
   
6. After letting stand for 10 minutes, mix ingredients together.
   
7. Transfer batter into muffin tins.
   
8. Bake 20-23 minutes.
   

Makes 12 muffins, with 90 calories and $0.43 per serving.

Butternut Squash Soup

Mama Bird has been pretty amazing recently.  Not only did she magically produce a brand new immersion blender from our basement when I mentioned I was thinking of buying one, she signed us up for a Community Supported Agriculture.  If you don't know what that is, it means that every Wednesday for the next two months we get a box of locally grown vegetables.  I was quite excited about it when she brought the idea up to me, because I knew that it meant I'd be getting vegetables to play with that I had never cooked.  Sure enough, last week we had a butternut squash and some leeks.  I haven't messed with the leeks, although Mama Bird stole the potatoes that were meant to become the chips for the fish and chips I'll be making sometime this week.  Hopefully Thursday or Friday, if Skyrim doesn't steal my entire life.

I wasn't sure I'd like this soup, because I've never been a huge squash fan, and I don't tend to enjoy sweetness.  But I liked this.  I dipped some bread in it at first, but I don't think it needs that.  It tastes thick, like it has cream, but it's all healthy.  I'm hoping to eat it for lunch this week to make up for the amount of naughtiness I've been eating- remember that coconut ice?  It's all gone now.  I throw out the remaining third after I gained enough strength to resist it.  Sadly, I didn't ever take a picture of it...   nor do I have a picture of this soup.  It just doesn't look great, sadly.

But it tastes good.  If you want a light healthy soup, give it a shot.

Recipe from A Year of Slow Cooking.

1 butternut squash

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 onions

4 cups vegetable broth

2 apples

1.5 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon cloves

1/4 teaspoon coriander

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1. Cut squash in half longways, microwaving if the skin is too tough.
   
2. Scoop out seeds.
   
3. Coat in olive oil and roast at 400 for 15 minutes.
   
4. In slow cooker, combine cubed and peeled apples, onion, broth, and spices.
   
5. Cover and cook on high while waiting for squash.
   
6. Peel squash, and cut into cubes.
   
7. Cook on low for 8 hours.
   
8. Blend.
   

Strawberry Banana Muffins.... and a necklace.

For some reason, I wanted to take my picture of this muffin with the necklace that I had recently bought. So I did.



Sadly, I don't have any pictures of the muffins that don't have the necklace, and none of them came out terribly well, so... I wish I had realized that before I ate all of the muffins. The necklace is gorgeous, and can be found on Lisa Leonard Designs. Her pictures of it are much, much better!

And please, I already have been informed of the irony of a bird wearing a bird necklace.

As for the muffin... well, I am not a big fan of bananas, so it amused Mama Bird that I would opt to make muffins with bananas. Especially since I had to fight Papa Bird for the bananas, which caused some tension for a few days. But she makes delicious banana bread, so I knew I liked banana flavor, just not something else about them.

These were much more successful than the cherry muffins. I'm not a huge fan of when I get a bite that's all banana and no strawberry, but I'm sure normal people who like bananas would disagree with me. Even with my disdain for bananas, I thought these were pretty delicious, and they will be staying in the breakfast rotation.

Recipe from A Pookie Pantry.
(Makes 17 muffins, with 140 calories and $0.25 per serving)

1/4 cup unsalted butter

1/4 cup applesauce

3/4 cup light brown sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 large ripe bananas

1 cup strawberries

2.25 cups all-purpose flour

1.5 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teapoon salt

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
   
2. Whisk together brown sugar, eggs, vanilla extract, and mashed bananas.
   
3. Add applesauce and melted butter and stir to combine.
   
4. In another bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt.
   
5. Gently fold in the strawberries, making sure they are coated with flour .
   
6. Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until just combined. Do not overmix.
   
7. Bake 20 to 25 minutes.
   

Today's lessons learned:

• Bananas: sometimes acceptable.
  

Too Many Cherries

Here's a little secret about Ms. Brown Bird: I think those chocolate-covered cherry candies are disgusting. There. I've said it. I do like cherries, though. So when I found a bag of frozen cherries that time had forgot in our freezer, I decided they'd be delicious in my next batch of muffins.

The cherries are lucky I didn't just throw them in a cobbler, frankly. It was so tempting.

These muffins... were not what I expected. Maybe that's because I messed up. Well. Almost definitely because I messed up, honestly. Let's be fair. Where did I go wrong? I'll let you head over to Tastorama first, so you can see what I thought I was going to be making.

Aren't they pretty?



At this point, I realized I shouldn't have chopped the cherries. But it was too late to fix that, so I just kept going until I had put the whole bag in. Mama Bird and I had an interesting conversation right about this point.

Mama: "Wow, that's... pink. How many cherries did you put in?"
Me: "Two cups..."
Mama: "Really? That bag was only two cups of cherries?"
Me: "Well, it was 16 ounces."
Mama: "...And?"
Me: "Well, 8 ounces is a cup, so 16 ounces should have been two cups. So I didn't measure, I just put them all in."

I was feeling very smug right then. I could do basic math, I knew a lot of conversions, and I had saved myself from having to wash a measuring cup. A complete victory, right?

Mama Bird then pointed out a few important things to me. 1) Two cups of chopped cherries and two cups of whole cherries are very different amounts. 2) Most objects aren't exactly 8 ounces to a cup, that's just a generally accepted conversion.

So. I had a lot of extra cherry flavor in these.



And my cutting board vaguely reminded me of a scene from Dexter.



They looked... sickly when they came out of the oven. There's really no other word for it. I was quite upset about it, because I am far too cheap to throw away muffins.

Oh. Did I mention I burned them slightly? Not really burned, but they were browned on the bottom, and I would always rather under-bake something. I've been on a streak of over-baking, it would seem...



But, honestly, they aren't actually bad. The flavor is very cherry-ful. Mama Bird is a fan of them, so not all is lost. They also freeze wonderfully, so my dream of eating muffins for breakfast every day continues. Next up will be a banana-strawberry muffin, but before I post them I'll have to share what else I made last week, and my mother's day gift to Mama Bird!

Recipe from Tastorama
(Makes 24 muffins, with 136 calories and $0.19 per muffin.)

3 cups minus 2 tablespoons flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoons salt

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 egg

1 cup yogurt

2 cups cherries

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 385.
   
2. Combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in one bowl.
   
3. In separate bowl, whisk together sugar, oil, vanilla, egg, and yogurt.
   
4. Add the wet ingredients to dry, then fold in cherries.
   
5. Scoop batter into muffin pan.
   
6. Bake for 25 minutes.
   

Today's lessons learned:

• 8 ounces is not always a cup.
  
• Not all fruit in muffins is diced.
  
• Measuring chopped fruit and whole fruit is very important.
  

Bigger Muffin, Bigger Breakfast

I should have shared these muffins with the world when I first made them. Sadly, I only had 18 muffins, and there is strong evidence that 18 muffins isn't enough to feed the world. It's not even enough muffins to last me through a month of breakfast.

These are probably the most flavorful muffins that I've made since I started this breakfast muffin fest. The blueberry muffins have so far had my favorite texture, but these rival them. The blueberry are fluffy and sort of sugary, but these combine the fluffiness of warm muffin, oatmeal, the crunchiness of nuts and apple, and the chewiness of dried fruit... I will most definitely be making these muffins again. Not right away, because I am out of craisins and have some cornbread I need to use up, but definitely within a few months.

It might be a little hard to tell from the picture, but...



I finally started making decently sized muffins. Notice how only one didn't puff up above the caking cups this time? With the muffin sizes I was making before I think I'd have no problem making this recipe make 24 muffins, but they'd be tiny little breakfasts. I'm trying to eat more at breakfast, since I've finally admitted that 200 calories is probably the minimum I should eat in the morning. (These are only 177. But I'm getting close!)

On a side note: I started PAM'ing the muffin cups before filling with batter, and they all just slip right out. I'm back to being happy that I bought these.

I don't think I am supposed to re-print this recipe, but if you want it, here is where you can find it: Apple Nut Oatmeal Muffins from Crepes of Wrath. (Makes 18 muffins, about $0.42 and 177 calories per muffin)

Today's lessons learned:

• Grating apples makes a ton of juice, and not as much apple as I'd expect.
  
• Adding chopped nuts does wonders for the texture of muffins.
  
• Apple sauce in muffins? Smart.
  

Valentine's Day, aka I LOVE CHOCOLATE

A few weeks ago I made some impressively messed up muffins. I won't say bad because they were edible, unlike the disastrous cornbread muffins I tried. They were messed up because I just didn't really think about the different types of flour. Those muffins completely failed to rise, resulting in midget muffins that were incredibly dense and had a very strange texture. I ate them for a week or two, and then was sick of having to hide my breakfast in shame each morning.



Notice how you can stack two in a muffin container that's meant for one. Eating just one wasn't filling at all. It just made me hungrier. On Sunday night, I had had enough of them and decided that since I'd be in the kitchen for my Valentine's experiment, I should make proper muffins. And these turned out fantastically, with one~ little problem.



It seems that the heart shaped ones weren't completely done (although I swear I toothpick tested them, I really did). But they still taste delicious so I don't mind. Supposedly they are only 98 calories. I'm not sure I believe that. They don't taste like they're less than a hundred calories. They're deliciously fluffy, even after being frozen. I am tempted to never cook another muffin recipe and try substituting other fruits for the blueberries.

I've already gone through two weeks of them, so I will have to start looking for the next recipe soon. Probably more fruit, as it lets me pretend they're healthy.

Although I can almost fit two muffins in my cupcake holder. I wonder if I just make my muffins too small?

Blueberry Muffins from Chocolatesuze
(Makes 20 mufins, approximately $0.95 per muffin)
Ingredients

1.33 cups sour cream

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 tablespoons milk

4 tablespoons butter

2 cups self-rising flour

3/4 cup sugar

2 cups blueberries

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 345F.
   
2. Mix sour cream, sugar, egg, and vanilla extract together.
   
3. Add flour to mixture.
   
4. Add the blueberries and stir gently.
   
5. Add butter and milk, continuing to stir gently.
   
6. Bake for 20 minutes, or longer if not done.
   

These also freeze just fine, although they stick to each other when you pull them out if you aren't careful. I've had a few causalities. I'm a good bit late for a Valentine's post, but timeliness isn't really my thing. Boyfriend Bird and I decided we didn't really want to celebrate Valentine's Day, or at least not 'traditionally'. For us, Valentine's comes after a string of birthdays and Christmas and our anniversary, so we're both out of gift ideas. (I say us both, but it's me. He's very good at gifts.) We decided that we wouldn't go out to a fancy dinner or buy each other anything, but just have a quiet night together. And it was wonderful. We went to a local grilled cheese place and then played Minecraft and Black Ops for the night. We're nerdy birds. But of course I couldn't resist trying to make SOMETHING for him. So I bought oreos, chocolate, a candy mold, and had some fun. The one in the top corner was me wondering if I could just dunk them with my hands. No. Chocolate is hot. Do not try that. It will hurt and you will feel dumb. (But if you do, you should probably eat that oreo before anyone else sees it. And then post pictures of it on the internet anyway.) I also decided to be fancy and do some white chocolate too. I melted all this chocolate by using what I have dubbed the 'ghetto boiler,' although I think it's actually a pretty common method. Mama Bird has an impressive collection of pots, so I found two that sit on top of each other, boiled water in the bottom one and then put the chocolate in the top one. So by making my own double boiler. There are plenty of guides on how to do it written by people who actually know what they're doing, if anyone is really curious. Sadly, I only made about seven white chocolate cookies. I've used my ghetto boiler two or three times before, but this was the first time I overheated the chocolate. It was an interesting experience; the chocolate firmed back into a solid. I was confused at first, thinking that the steam must all be escaping and that I needed to turn up the heat, so I only made it worse. But at least a few of them weren't ruined. The milk chocolate ones turned out wonderfully. The candy mold chocolates turned out mostly well too. They tasted wonderful (other than burning it, how can you mess up oreos and chocolate?), but I didn't really have a good strategy for trimming the excess chocolate from the edges of the mold. If/When I attempt this in the future, I will be more mindful of scraping the extra chocolate on the mold, and filling them to the proper point so they sit correctly. Not that Boyfriend Bird minded. I think most of them are gone at this point. We did end up going out for a Valentine's dinner that Friday. We went to a wonderful sushi place, and he got me to try some crazy ones. Boyfriend Bird is much more adventurous than I, he really enjoys going out and ordering food or beer he's never had before. Like duck tongue. We ordered sea urchin, but I wimped out because it looked so strange, but I did eat the salmon roe. And the enormous special we ordered that I could hardly fit in my mouth, and the delicious spicy grilled roll... This post's cooking lesson(s):

• Pay attention to the type of flour you're supposed to use.
  
• Don't overheat chocolate when trying to melt it.
  
• Try new foods! (maybe this is more of a life lesson...)
  

Blueberry muffins and silicone bakeware

Today, I ate my last cornbread muffin. They were delicious, but all good things must come to an end, and it was time to move onto a new flavor of muffin. My TasteSpotting brought up a picture of some delicious looking blueberry muffins, and I decided that those sounded good.

It helped that the local Harris Teeter was having a sale on blueberries. And yes, I know they're not in season, but we're not going to focus on that.

Aside from a new beginning in muffins, today marks the first day I actually used my silicone bakeware for baking. Months ago I used the heart shaped ones to make Bailey's flavored cheesecake, but it didn't involve baking it. I also tried to eat it after only letting it sit for about two hours, which was a disaster. Mama and Papa Bird flew into the nest the next day and ate all the remaining ones with some friends, and assured me that they were wonderful the next day. If only I had been patient!



But baking with the silicone brought up a big problem for me. Did I spray the liners with Pam, or did I just pray to the cooking gods that it'd turn out okay? Well, I opted to not spray the first batch, just in case you aren't supposed to and it'd ruin them somehow. So if this ruins them, at least it'll only ruin six muffins.

A recent check on the muffins has shown that the berries are rupturing, spilling their delicious juices all over the muffins. They look delicious.

First batch out, and I will confirm that you do not need to spray silicone baking liners, or at least these. Now, these muffins...





I ended up making Chocolate Suze's blueberry muffins, because I loved her pictures. I was a little intrigued by the lack of baking soda or baking powder, but I wasn't concerned because it was supposed to be self-rising flour, and... and then Mama Bird mentioned 'oh, I thought all flour was self-rising.' So I havev extremely dense muffins that did not exactly rise. Despite that, they are not at all bad. Very dense, and not exactly what I'd expect, but definitely tasty. Next time I make them I will put something in them so they actually rise, but my breakfast for the next few weeks is secure, either way.

I am quite impressed by the bakeware, too. I can' tell if the bakeware is a little smaller than my other muffin tins, if it was the lining, or the lack of rising, but we'll find out when I make the next batch of muffins. We'll also find out how well these babies freeze...



And for anyone else who didn't know you can make your all-purpose flour self rising, here is the 'official' formula for converting King Arthur all-purpose flour into self-rising. Take 1.5 teaspoons of baking powder and half a teaspoon salt into a measuring cup, then add fluffed flour into it until you reach one cup. Stir well, with a fork or something, and voilà, one cup self-rising flour.

I'm down to 16 muffins already (I... may have snacked on two and taken two for breakfast the next morning morning), so they won't even make it through February. I accidentally bought too many blueberries, so I have enough for a second batch. We'll see how they taste when I don't mess them up.

On sleeping in and muffins

I have a dog. Doggie Bird, I suppose I will call her. Boyfriend Bird hates her because despite being adorable, she is very poorly trained, and snaps at anything that moves if it's within an arbitrary radius and disturbs her while she's sleeping. We all know this and make sure to wake her up when we wish to move.

Yes, it's a little ridiculous.

She's still adorable.

Last night, she came in to sleep on my floor, which is her favorite place to sleep from about midnight to six or so, when she goes to sleep other places, meaning I have to always have my door open so she can escape. I normally keep a mess of blankets on the ground for her to nest in, which is adorable. They were all cleaned over the weekend, and I had no blankets to give her.

So I found a shower curtain.



She slept fine.

She continued sleeping when I was going to work, and will sleep until someone comes home. I am jealous of her, although perhaps I would be tired of sleeping in every day eventually. Certainly not any time soon.

What I would really do if I had her life would be make muffins all the times. I love having a muffin for breakfast, as it's something you can just grab out of the freezer if you've frozen them, they're low-calorie if you don't make super sugary ones, and they're quite good. My last muffin experiments were raspberry and cinnamon. I actually made two batches of raspberry, because I messed the first up.



See the middle of the muffin? That is the lone raspberry in the muffin. Instead of chopping the raspberries up so they were well-distributed through the muffins I just threw in a cup of non-chopped raspberries. It made the muffins dry, and although they weren't bad they were certainly disappointing. So what did I do? I made more muffins. To make up for my sadness.



The second batch of raspberry muffins looked promising, and I had made sure to chop the berries this time, so I had high hopes. But since these were my 'breakfast work muffin,' I was concerned that three weeks of nothing but raspberry muffins would get old fast, so I made cinnamon as well.



While I have no problem with cinnamon muffins (I made the darn things, didn't I?), I was so much more expected for the raspberry that I had one as soon as it came out of the oven. And had cooked enough for me to grab it. Maybe a little sooner. It smelled so good.

I had to try a cinnamon one too, for... fairness.

The raspberry ones turned out perfectly this time. The chopped raspberries distributed through the muffin, keeping it from being dry, and giving a much more uniform raspberry flavor. I devoured those muffins, and wish I had made more. I am going to, eventually, but the raspberry muffins are approximately 250 calories apiece, which is a little much for me for breakfast. They'd probably be much less without the crumb topping, so I may try that someday to see how much flavor/texture they lose.

As for the cinnamon, I will not make them again. I am a fan of cinnamon, but when it is worked in to the whole muffin, not just on the outside. I also probably did not make them 'correctly,' as they weren't exactly light and fluffy. Either way, I will most likely not make them again. Which is okay, because the Hillbilly Housewife has a large collection of freezer muffins for me to pick from. The two I made here were the raspberry muffins, which I highly recommend, and the cinnamon muffins, which I'd recommend if you really like cinnamon and are better at baking than I am. Which is not hard to be.

Apple dumplings, aka how I'm giving myself diabetes as quickly as possible

I made the apple dumplings from Pioneer Woman today. I and a group of friends went to a local Pho place for dinner, and apparently I ordered the worst thing on the menu because it was disgusting. I ate maybe a fourth of my meal before giving up and moping. So when we got back to our friend's apartment, I decided to make the apple dumplings to make up for the dinner.

I had planned on making them the previous night, when there were eight people in this apartment. But we got back from game night late, no one was really that hungry, I wasn't in the mood to cook, and it didn't happen. Tonight, there were five of us there: Boyfriend Bird, Jujyfruits Bird, .Hack Bird, and Challah Bird. I knew we had enough to make more than one serving of the dumplings, but I decided to just make them all, thinking that maybe we'd have leftovers. I was really hoping this would mean I would get to eat five of these.

I should not have wished for this.

So we made them. They smelled wonderful, Challah Bird and I kept opening the oven to sniff them. And then they were done, and we did some quick math. There were 24 dumplings, and five of us. That was almost five per person! But we decided to do four apiece, and let people fight for the extra.

I knew how rich they were. I had eaten them last weekend. And I knew I had been on a diet for a few months, and hadn't eaten anything nearly that sugary since I had started. In retrospect, there were plenty of warnings that I shouldn't eat as many of these as I did.

I ate all four of mine. Most of my friends proved they weren't as foolish as I and only ate three. As soon as I put my spoon down, I realized I felt slightly queasy. And for the rest of the night I hugged my stomach, being torn between wishing I hadn't eaten them all, and knowing that there were more sitting in the kitchen and remembering how delicious they were.

As delicious as they are, maybe I'll wait a few months before I make more.

Apple Dumplings from Pioneer Woman, modified slightly
(Serves 6, approximately $4.93 per serving)
Ingredients

2 granny smith apples

2 cans crescent rolls

12 tablespoons butter

1.5 cup white sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 cup mountain dew

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350.
   
2. Peel and core apples. Cut into 8 slices each.
   
3. Roll each apple slice in a crescent roll, and place in pan.
   
4. Melt butter, and add sugar. Barely stir.
   
5. Add vanilla, stir in slightly.
   
6. Pour mixture over apple rolls. Pour Mountain Dew around edges of pan.
   
7. Sprinkle with cinnamon.
   
8. Bake for 35-40 minutes.
   

Today's lesson learned:

• Only ever eat two apple dumplings.