It's been a few weeks since I've posted, because I've been a busy girl. We were out of town for the first week of September, and now preschool has started and my schedule has just been so hectic! I"ve still been baking but have forgotten to take pictures of half of the items (I made pineapple upside down cake twice). I baked three sets of muffins and some cupcakes.
The first set of muffins was an attempt at making my version of cinnamon roll muffins. I microwaved some raisins and nuts in a couple of tablespoons of butter to make them plump, and added them to the muffin mixture. Then I topped the muffins with a mixture of butter and brown sugar. The result? Very buttery muffins! So that didn't quite turn out how I had expected.
I also made some very nutty muffins for my husband and his sister. I added nuts and raisins to my basic muffin recipe from The Joy of Cooking, and then I topped each muffin with as many nuts as I could fit prior to baking. That turned out pretty well and they seemed happy with the results.
Baking in someone else's kitchen is always a new and different experience. I know how long muffins take to cook in my oven, and I keep notes with each recipe of how long it took a cake to cook perfectly. It's helpful to not have to check the cake every 5 minutes to see if it's done. When I was baking in my husband's sister's house, it was a bit of a challenge because I wasn't used to her oven or anything, and everything seemed to take a good 5-10 minutes longer to cook. I made some cupcakes as a test run for Lesli's birthday, thinking that strawberry filled lemon cupcakes would go over well. But I made an error in measuring the flour -- I neglected to take care and make sure that the flour did not get too packed down in the measuring cups when I was measuring it. The end result was some very dense cupcakes that did not taste very good at all. The icing and the filling were both quite tasty though. So now I have to forge ahead with a second attempt at perfecting the cupcakes themselves before I make them for Lesli on her birthday. I can't be dropping off nasty cupcakes at her office! I will add a post on how the second attempt goes, once I get a chance to do it.
I also made some chocolate chip muffins today, and a couple of weeks ago I made and froze some dough for date-filled cookies that I plan to thaw and cook eventually. I'm not sure when I'll get the chance!
