Read Your Recipe!
As far as I have observed, there are two ways people partake of their thanksgiving meals. There are the “each food group must not touch other food groups and I will eat each one separately” people, and then the “I will ardently try to get every food group on my fork before taking a bite” people. I am the latter. Interestingly, my husband is the former and I think it’s weird. I say, “aren’t you going to eat your green beans?”, and he says, “I’ll get to them when I am done my stuffing”. Hmm.
In level 1 cooking one of the first thing we talk about is how to understand a recipe. See, the thing is, if you understand how to read a recipe and how to do what the recipe tells you, you can cook! This muffin recipe supports and exemplifies that statement – let me explain.
I’ve had a revelation! We should all eat like babies. Seriously, babies have wonderfully healthy diets. They don’t eat sugar, they enjoy small portions of high fat dairy, lean meat and fish, whole grains, and fruits and veggies. It’s seriously the way we all should eat! These muffins pass the baby health test (as well as the Tessa taste test – decidedly choosy), which means they are FANTASTIC for you.
You should know – there aren’t actually oatmeal cookies in these muffins. They are muffins that taste like oatmeal cookies.
Here you go, Lynnie my love!
These muffins are not fancy, by any means. They are from Joy of Cooking and they come together in ten minutes flat. Seriously, they are one of fastest, easiest baked goods for you to have a go at. The thing is, I’m not a fan of fancy most of the time. These don’t need coconut milk, brazil nuts or cocoa nibs to be enticing… the smell in your kitchen will do the trick.
Warning – if you make these and think you can keep them around the house for a while, prepare to gain a quick five pounds. Don’t get me wrong, you should definitely make them, but it’s only safe to have a few around at a time. Give them to your friends or coworkers or freeze the extras. When these were in my kitchen I found myself making up excuses to hang out in there, just so I could piece off a bit (or five). “No seriously, honey, I don’t mind doing the dishes/feeding the baby/making your lunch”. I ended up giving them away because I felt slightly crazed when I was too close to them.
My students always ask if I make amazing, gourmet meals for my husband at dinnertime. Ha! Not only would that be pricey, it’d be super annoying for me, the one who does the cooking. Though I grew up in a house where dinner meant dinner: a meat, a starch, a veggie, this theory didn’t seem to rub off on me. My thoughts are that food should taste good, and the categories are dumb.
That being said, we have eggs for dinner. A lot.
Scones are comforting. Like how mashed potatoes are comforting? That’s how scones are to me. They aren’t so sweet like a cookie, or bready like a biscuit. They are SO SO good with hot tea or coffee, and they’re somehow fancy but not the least bit pretentious.
I love pumpkin. I love baking with pumpkin. I have even been known to stir some cinnamon and sugar into plain canned pumpkin and eat it for a snack. Yum.
My husband is a high school football coach and preseason started on Monday. Normally I make him a protein shake in the mornings with frozen bananas, chocolate protein powder, peanut butter, etc. I’m happy to do this on a normal basis, but not at 6 am when I don’t have to be up that early. What to do? I felt like baking, so I started thinking about including protein powder in a baked good; maybe a muffin? He could grab one or two on his way out the door and have a complete, high protein breakfast that would get him through to lunch.
OK, so scones are the best. In college I used to end almost every day with a cinnamon chip scone and a chai latte (and then I gained ten pounds).
So all three classes of these muffins have been made, and (almost) all came out well. I happened to grab a piece of muffin that was basically falling off in one kitchen and I had to spit it out! I guess they went wrong with their leavening agents (baking powder and baking soda, in this case) but MAN was it gross. I mean, I told them to dump all their muffins in the trash. Yuck. Otherwise, good things happened.
This past week I’ve baked three recipes from my new awesome cook book. Today was the third, and I have to say all three were perfect, as written! I forgot to photograph the first two but I had my camera out for these muffins! Super easy to make, all ingredients on hand and delicious!
First microwave baking experience, and I do believe I blew some teenage minds this morning! Mix up a completely normal and delish batter, bake for 2 minutes in the microwave, and you have perfectly delicious, warm, tender muffins! Pretty great.
A rainy Friday here. I actually prefer making pancakes on Fridays but biscuits smell almost as good and you can fill them with lots of good things 
I found one leftover biscuit that a kid hadn’t snatched up and I sneakily filled it with NUTELLA. It made my rainy Friday absolutely delightful. My heart actually raced when I bit into it, not gonna lie.
First block day, which means that this recipe was prepped, created, eaten and cleaned up in an 80 minute time period (instead of the usual 40).
We had a recipe for blueberry muffins that left me wanting more. I decided to go a’searching. First spot I check is ALWAYS America’s Test Kitchen… I usually search no further, as I find just what I was looking for!