Thursday, February 5, 2009

The World's Worst Muffins!

I had exactly 2 1/2 bananas in the kitchen and thought I'd make banana muffins for breakfast the next day. I remembered the chocolate banana cake/bread I used to make, and so I replaced 1/2 cup of the flour with cocoa. Treasured cocoa. Cocoa I brought back from the States. COCOA! Cinnamon goes well with chocolate and bananas, so I added 1/2 tsp. or so of that. Then, the big bag of raisins was calling my name, so I put in a handful of those. Raisins go with chocolate and bananas. RIGHT?!? All the time I was blogging in my head about the wonderful muffins I had made.

I added the liquid and eggs and stirred. It was more of a dough than a batter. Stir till moistened was a lot of work and then I chipped the dough out of the bowl into the muffin tins that Jun had so kindly fit paper liners into. I popped the pan into the oven and looked at the recipe again. Yes, I had reduced the milk like they said to do when adding bananas. Yes, I had done it all right....EXCEPT FOR THE OIL. Which I had forgotten.

The muffins had been in the oven for less than a minute, so I grabbed them out and scraped the already warm dough out of each of the paper covers. Then I added the oil. It took FOREVER to mix the oil into the dough, and even then it really wasn't a batter.

As I was re-filling the newly lined muffin tins, I noticed the top 1/4 of the narrow rubber spatula I was using was missing. Oh, NO! "Help me find it before it gets in a muffin," I prayed. Just as I popped the muffins BACK into the re-preheated oven, I found the tip of the spatula. "I'll just give Jun a quick taste of the batter," I thought. One taste was all Jun needed. This should have been a sign. A neon sign. But, no, I just kept on baking muffins. Well, twelve or so in all, anyway. In my tiny oven, that is a two pan job.

And waited with anticipation for breakfast the next morning. Oh, my goodness! They were so terrible! Not only was the texture an embarrassment to the word "muffin," the flavor! YUCK! Apparently 1/2 cup of precious-brought-from-America-and-horded cocoa needs more than 1/3 cup of sugar to make it yummy. Much more, my husband and I decided!

These muffins had, as we say in Japanese, "an adult flavor", meaning a kid wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole. And, no one in my family really likes "adult flavors".

So, knowing there were leftovers, Ryu got up early the last two mornings and made his toast/salami sandwich before I got up to serve the muffins. I brought them to church today and fed them to my students. No one asked for the recipe. YUCK! (However, Jun did eat a whole one. Shows how hungry she was, huh!?!?)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh my goodness sakes! Very few recipes I have used call for 1/2 cup of cocoa! That is a lot of unsweetened chocolate! Next time, if there is a next time, try chocolate chips. You can never go wrong with chocolate chips. Glad you had a helper putting all those liners in the pans!