Butter muffins, pineapple upside-down cakes, and flour flavored cupcakes

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!

Sour cream and chocolate chip muffins

I substituted whole wheat flour for half of the all purpose flour in this recipe, and sour cream for the milk.  Then I added about half a bag of chocolate chips before baking them.  I learned yet again that you have to read everything about the recipe before cooking it, because after I took them out of the oven I realized they must be eaten or frozen the day they are made!  So I froze most of them and discovered the next day that they taste pretty good if taken out of the freezer and put in the microwave for 20 seconds.

I also cheated yesterday and made brownies from a mix that I had in the pantry.  Once those are gone I won't be baking anything unless it's from scratch.  I'm trying to expand my baking repertoire and am trying to not get intimidated by complicated recipes.  The only reason I get intimidated is because it's hard to focus with a toddler and an infant in the room -- yesterday I accidentally put one tbsp baking soda into my muffin mix instead of baking powder!  Luckily I noticed this before I mixed in the wet ingredients and I was able to dump it out and start over again.

Some recipes that I see on the horizon include my attempt at cinnamon roll muffins, more pineapple upside down cake (by special request), and a practice run of cupcakes that I am going to make Lesli for her birthday.

flourish

flourish, intransitive verb: to be in a state of activity or production

Now that the pregnancy and newborn phases are over, and I have my energy back (for the most part), I can once again focus on things that bring me joy. Aside, of course, from my family. While I was pregnant it was simply enough to make it through each day. Not so after the baby was a couple of months old and we were getting into the groove of things with the three of us.

Between baby classes and playdates, we were keeping rather busy, but I still felt like something was missing. Those of you with jobs outside the home probably know the feeling of accomplishing a task and being able to stand back and say "I did that," and to feel good about it. Parenting doesn't really work that way, and neither does taking care of the house. For every load of laundry folded and put away, made bed (ha!), and washed face, there's a new load of dirty clothes, sheets with spit up all over them, and lunch, snack or dinner to wipe up not ten minutes later.

I'm always trying to get my husband to eat breakfast, and a healthy breakfast at that. I'd see him grabbing muffins or pastries from a coffee shop, and if you've ever seen the nutrition information on such products, you know they're not the healthiest. On a whim, I picked up a box of muffin mix at the grocery store and made them at home. They turned out okay, but I wanted to try my hand at making some muffins from scratch. Three different recipes and three different batches of muffins later, I had a found a healthy muffin recipe that I liked (it's on the side of the Bob's Oat Bran package). I ended up baking about five dozen muffins in three weeks. After that I opened up the Joy of Cooking and started picking recipes to try one by one, and I started posting the pictures of each finished product on Facebook. So far I've made angel food cake, velvet spice cake, banana cake, chocolate mousse cake, black bottom cupcakes, cranberry bread, all the pancakes recipes in JoC, and loads of muffins.

You could say I've flourished in the Kitchen. Pun intended.

gumption

gumption, noun: enterprise, initiative

I've been unable to muster up the gumption to do much these days. My energy level is getting lower as the pregnancy progresses, and my back hurts when I bend down to pick something up, and the monkey requires most of my attention when she's awake.

This post has been brought to you by the letter N, for Nap.

cesarean section

cesarean section, noun: a surgical incision of the walls of the abdomen and uterus for delivery of offspring.

I had to have a c-section when the monkey was born, and I am now all set up to have another for the delivery of her little brother. We have so much to do in the house to prepare for his arrival. I just hope we can get it all done. We have to rearrange the office, move all the guest bedroom furniture into the basement, move the monkey into the old guest bedroom, and then set up for the little dude in the nursery. I don't know why, but I've been calling him the little dude for awhile now and the nickname has just kind of stuck in my mind.

ETA: I just read way too much about c-sections when I looked up the definition for this post. Out of curiosity I clicked a link to Encyclopedia Brittanica, and then decided to check out what Wikipedia had to say about c-sections. Apparently some lady in a village in Mexico is the only person known to have given herself a c-section. I cannot imagine that!

Book Review: Inkdeath

This book was so hard to get into, but since I read the first two books of the trilogy I was kind of committed to finishing it. There was really only one way the book could have ended, so the only real "surprise" were the events leading up to the inevitable. Even those weren't that interesting.

sputum

sputum, noun: expectorated matter especially from the air passages in diseases of the lungs, bronchi, or upper respiratory tract

The monkey and I are down with colds. She is getting very tired of not leaving the house and keeps running to the door and saying "friends, friends, friends." Whenever we head out to a baby class or storytime I tell her we are going to see her friends. We haven't been anywhere in almost a week. Here's hoping to improved health in our household.

Book Review: The Girl Who Played With Fire

This book was just as good as the first one. I want to read the third one but may put it off for awhile because I will be sad when the series ends. The author died before the books were even published, so there's no chance of any more books being added to the series. I hear there are talks of making a movie based on the first book. That would be awesome.

p.s. I realize these book reviews are very short and unsubstantial, but if you click on the links to Amazon, you'll see reviews and synopses by the experts. I just want to share my overall opinion and don't lately have the time to elaborate. I have a crazy toddler and much less energy what with 3 months left in my pregnancy.

Book Review: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Bottom Line

I loved it, and I can't wait to read the next two books in the series.

absent

absent, transitive verb: too keep (oneself) away

absent, adjective: not present or attending: MISSING