Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Muffin Fail

I like to think of myself as a good or even better than average cook. It was my mother's desire that we all be able to cook when we left the nest and I think her devotion to that task has made me able to cook most anything. It is rare that I have a complete and utter failure but I did on Saturday. It was downright awful.

I used to collect cookbooks. If it struck my fancy, it came home. I never bought a cookbook full price, however, They were always found in the remainder bins, the 60-90% off tables, or even better, used book stores and sales. During the week, I tend to fall back on  the recipes I know and can whip up without too much trouble. It's on weekends that I try something new. I hauled out one of my chocolate cookbooks, leafed through it and found a recipe for Peanut Butter Surprise Muffins. The "surprise" was a chocolate kiss in the center. That sounded wonderful.

The dough was very dry, almost crumbly. It bore little resemblance to what I know as muffin batter. Instead of pouring or even dropping the batter into the cups, I had to make balls and press the mixture into the cups. It tasted great, but it resembled cookie dough more than muffin batter.

I pressed the kiss into the center of each and then covered each with another layer of dough. Finally, you add a topping of chopped peanuts and brown sugar. I really had my doubts about this. I slid the whole thing into the oven, set the timer and reread the recipe two more times to see what I missed.

Butter? Check. Peanut butter? Check. Egg? Check. Flour, soda, powder? Check, check, check. That was it. No oil. No milk. Nothing else liquid. That's the full list of ingredients.

The house smelled lovely, I'll grant the recipe that. In 20 minutes, they were done. While they looked good and smelled heavenly, they were hard as a brick. The recipe needs more liquid, maybe milk. They weren't even a cake or cookie like consistency. They were hard. They tasted fine, but the texture was akin to sand, once you broke them open. I'm adding them to the compost heap. To answer your question, without the kiss. I spent 30 minutes last night breaking each one apart to rescue the kiss. I'll be darned if I'm going to compost perfectly good chocolate kisses.

So, not everything I make comes out really good. One of my guild mates suggested I drizzle chocolate over these but that would be a waste of good chocolate. The top to the compost pile is somewhere in the yard so the squirrels will have fun jumping into the container and fishing out the peanuts. At least someone will like these.

Beverage:  English Breakfast tea

Deb

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