You Ain't Seen Muffin Yet!

Sunday 8/15/10 - Since I had planned on a doggie-faced muffin for my Dog Days of Summer muffin tin meal, I had bought a muffin mix when I went to the store on Saturday. Since I also had a plethora of blueberries, I chose  a cinnamon crumble mix, rather than cornbread, blueberry or raspberry, which seemed to be my only other options, in the hopes that they would still be yummy with blueberries in them.

Step 1: Dump (most of) the powder mix into mixing bowl.

Step 2: Add oil

Step 3: Add 2 eggs (she likes to bang them to get them to crack, then hands them over to a trained adult.)

Step 4: Add milk (should have been step 3, but I wasn't paying attention, and only noticed that milk was pictured/listed at the last moment!)

Step 5: Find beater for KitchenAid... Hmm... not on the KitchenAid... not in the dishwasher.... not on the counter... 

Step 5.1: Grab whisk & scraper. Mix.

Step 6: Quality Control Testing. 

Step 7: Wrest bowl away from toddler. Pour into selected muffin tins. She chose my silicone heart-shaped mold, and I needed at least 1 large round one, but we usually make mini muffins. So we used all 3 pans. My PAM baking spray ran out after 4 heart molds (really after 3, but I used a paper towel to share the wealth so we could make 4.) Used muffin cups and mini-muffin cups for the rest.
Step 8: Hastily add blueberries (I had planned on adding them to the batter, but forgot.) I put the chef-in-training in charge of blueberry duty. She carefully placed one blueberry on each heart-shaped muffin, then said 'Oh no! My other muffins are missing!'

When I told her that the batter was already used up, she placed a blueberry in each empty cup.

Step 9: Add crumble. She carefully spooned it out of the bag and onto the dough.

 'Crumbled' heart-shaped muffin batter

 'Crumbling' the large rounds

 Please note the crumble added to the empty cups. It was a bitch difficult to scrub out after burning it in while they baked!

 Finally, the mini-muffins.

I cleverly did not take any pictures of the cooked muffins, since we were waiting to take them out of the oven so we could start cleaning the garage and I totally forgot. However, they were tasty. We only added berries to the heart ones, and they only got 1 each, so I don't know how well that went. I didn't get to have one. :( The mini ones got a little burnt on the bottoms, as I forgot to check on them before the others were due to be done, but biting the tops off was no hardship! :)

Special thanks to Gamma Barp. Z's little 'table' is really a chair from her table-and-chairs set she got for Christmas. We used the table (with a fruity little tablecloth) for my first Kids Cooking Class, and the chair for the kids to stand on for hand-washing at the sink. We've since kept one chair in there so she can watch the action on the cutting board, stove, counters, etc. As an added benefit, she can now push it around and access pretty much anything she wants. The table and other chair have now become her computer desk! We love this set. It's been very sturdy (even I've used it as an emergency step-stool!) looks great, and so far everything wipes off easily!