1/100: Cinny minis
Today's task: bake mini cinnamon muffins! I used this recipe from Genius kitchen. Everything I have tried from that site has been fantastic like these oatmeal raisin cookies and this balsamic vinaigrette reduction. Due to these past successes, I have come to trust Genius kitchen and seek it out over the plethora of cooking sites whenever I search for generic recipes like: cinnamon muffins.
Today's adventure, however, was a bit of a muffin identity crisis!
I knew that something was going to be up when I started browsing through the comments. People said the muffins were awful, turned out like rocks, or had to be severely doctored to save. Whenever people do their own substitutions in Genius kitchen I generally look for a substitution consensus. Red flag #1: this recipe had no such consensus. Nevertheless, the recipe received 4/5 stars, so I was (perhaps errantly) undeterred and pushed forward.
I wrote all of the ingredients up on the board, with my own decided substitutions: 1/2 tsp almond extract, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract, half brown sugar and half white sugar, no allspice. Can we take a pause here: I highly suggest writing down all baking ingredients on a piece of paper or white board before starting. There's nothing like not having to unlock an electronic device to check how much and what to add next. Okay! Continuing forward, I mixed everything together and saw red flag #2: the batter looked like cookies. Instead of "pouring" the batter into the cups, it was a definite sticky wrestle off of the spoon. Behold, my cookies about to become muffins (because that's how it works, right??):
Thankfully, the muffins passed the "batter test." What is the batter test you ask? My own personal benchmark: if the batter tastes good, the baked item in question will taste good. I popped these puppies in the oven at 400 for 17 minutes and eagerly (with a tablespoon of worriedly) waited.
When they came out?? They rose, had marginal muffin tops, and were cooked through completely with that beautiful golden brown top. Much better than I expected! I quickly dusted them in some cinnamon coating and eagerly ran them over to my step dad to taste test my very first bake!
Our verdict was agreed upon almost instantly: yummy, but definitely not a muffin. They tasted more scone or biscuit than muffin, or caught somewhere in between the muffin and scone fold. Whatever the case, these muffins couldn't be pin-pointed to a specific entity, which dinged their overall taste.
All in all will I bake these again? Probably not. I don't have much experience baking muffins, but I imagine the batter is more cupcake-like than cookie-like, so I'd like to find a recipe that gives me more muffin! By the way, if you actually know what muffin batter is supposed to look like or why my batter looks so weird, please let me in on the secret!
In the end, I'm glad I made these muffins, but I probably should have walked away from this recipe at the first flag. Hindsight is 2020, though and it's only 2019! Har har ;)
I'm excited for my next bake already: croissants! See you shortly (:
P.S. Shoutout to my homegirl Alyse for fielding all of my blog questions. Check out her blog- she has ridiculously pretty pictures and a beautiful blog to boot!
Today's adventure, however, was a bit of a muffin identity crisis!
I knew that something was going to be up when I started browsing through the comments. People said the muffins were awful, turned out like rocks, or had to be severely doctored to save. Whenever people do their own substitutions in Genius kitchen I generally look for a substitution consensus. Red flag #1: this recipe had no such consensus. Nevertheless, the recipe received 4/5 stars, so I was (perhaps errantly) undeterred and pushed forward.
I wrote all of the ingredients up on the board, with my own decided substitutions: 1/2 tsp almond extract, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract, half brown sugar and half white sugar, no allspice. Can we take a pause here: I highly suggest writing down all baking ingredients on a piece of paper or white board before starting. There's nothing like not having to unlock an electronic device to check how much and what to add next. Okay! Continuing forward, I mixed everything together and saw red flag #2: the batter looked like cookies. Instead of "pouring" the batter into the cups, it was a definite sticky wrestle off of the spoon. Behold, my cookies about to become muffins (because that's how it works, right??):
Thankfully, the muffins passed the "batter test." What is the batter test you ask? My own personal benchmark: if the batter tastes good, the baked item in question will taste good. I popped these puppies in the oven at 400 for 17 minutes and eagerly (with a tablespoon of worriedly) waited.
When they came out?? They rose, had marginal muffin tops, and were cooked through completely with that beautiful golden brown top. Much better than I expected! I quickly dusted them in some cinnamon coating and eagerly ran them over to my step dad to taste test my very first bake!
Our verdict was agreed upon almost instantly: yummy, but definitely not a muffin. They tasted more scone or biscuit than muffin, or caught somewhere in between the muffin and scone fold. Whatever the case, these muffins couldn't be pin-pointed to a specific entity, which dinged their overall taste.
All in all will I bake these again? Probably not. I don't have much experience baking muffins, but I imagine the batter is more cupcake-like than cookie-like, so I'd like to find a recipe that gives me more muffin! By the way, if you actually know what muffin batter is supposed to look like or why my batter looks so weird, please let me in on the secret!
In the end, I'm glad I made these muffins, but I probably should have walked away from this recipe at the first flag. Hindsight is 2020, though and it's only 2019! Har har ;)
I'm excited for my next bake already: croissants! See you shortly (:
P.S. Shoutout to my homegirl Alyse for fielding all of my blog questions. Check out her blog- she has ridiculously pretty pictures and a beautiful blog to boot!
Regardless of texture, the cinny minis were tasty! Good job!
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