Apple Pie Muffins

So it all started with two boxes of Jiffy Apple Cinnamon muffin mix (on sale for $.60!). Added the necessary ingredients, and then a dumped in a ton of cinnamon and nutmeg. I took an apple and cut it into very small pieces. Then I added some secret ingredient. It looked pretty runny so I also mixed in a few tablespoons of some whole wheat flour. Mix, mix, mix and toss it in the over.

12-15 minutes later, out pop some delicioso apple pie muffins! Be at Beltane to sample!

Chocolate Chip Muffins

So work is terribly stressful, which leads to baking!

Tonight I made chocolate chip muffins for the morning:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
1/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup milk
1/2 cup butter -- melted and cooled
2 eggs - beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 package (12 oz) chocolate chips

Okay, so maybe I added some extra chocolate chips, and some secret ingredient, but who's counting? Anyway, that yielded some tasty muffins (I may have had chocolate chip muffins and beer for dinner, oops?)

Just an aside, I love how having things in the oven gives me time to clean in the kitchen! I almost always do my baking dishes (plus whatever else is in the sink) while my treats are baking, and today I cleaned the stove top too!

Chocolate Cupcakes, Giant Cupcake, and Muffin Aside...

Saturdays are great days for baking. Yay baking. It's a problem, I know. And I've roped the roomie into my addiction. I'm a horrible person. So after our Saturday morning BSG fix, we found ourselves in the kitchen.

Alright, so I'd already been in the kitchen this morning. I whipped up a quick batch of lemon poppy seed muffins from a cheap mix that was on sale at the grocery store. With a bit of secret ingredient mixed in, I tossed them in the oven while I made coffee. After all, we'd need fuel for the cupcake madness to come. The mix yielded a nice half dozen, and for being so cheap and easy, they were pretty damn tasty.

But really, what matters here is cupcakes. Because who doesn't love cupcakes, right? Anyway, being the lovely sharer of addictions that I am, I had gotten her a Big Top Cupcake pan for the holidays to go with the lovely new stand mixer I knew she was getting. So she was baking with that for the first time. She filled it with funfetti cake mix, and into the oven it went. She made a tasty peanut butter filling for it too... it had peanut butter chips, peanut butter, butter, sugar, and milk. Yummy.

I made some chocolate cupcakes:
2 cups of all-purpose flour
2 cups of brown sugar
2 cups of melted semi-sweet chocolate chips
2 tsp. baking soda
2 large eggs
1 tsp. salt
1 cup of vegetable oil
A generous splash of vanilla extract
1 cup of water
And some secret ingredient

We were having oven issues today. Not everything baked evenly. Though I made about 2 dozen cupcakes, only about a dozen were presentable. So I frosted those with leftover frosting from the Murdercake. Added some sprinkles to make them super cute, and we have hooray cupcakes!