I love to cook. I’m fairly good at it (no one has died yet). Baking is my forte–at least that is where I spend the bulk of my cooking time because I love sweets. One thing I am not good at is following the recipe. I am not certain I’m capable of following a recipe. I start out with the best of intentions, but if I were playing piano someone would send out for the tuner in a hurry.

After attempting to read Murder on the Rocks (Gray Whale Inn Mysteries, No. 1) and giving up, one of my buddies mentioned that the recipes alone were worth having. So she sent me one of her favorites from the series, a decadent muffin recipe. I’m going to include that recipe, and then we’ll talk about what actually happened in my kitchen.

COUNTRY PLACE MUFFINS (Clovis’ Famous Muffins)

DRY INGREDIENTS

2 C flour
1/2 C sugar
3 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 C frozen cranberries (cut in half)
1/2 C blueberries (whole)
1/2 C pecans or walnuts
1/2 C raisins (soaked in hot water and drained)
3/4 large apple (diced)

WET INGREDIENTS

3/4 C milk
1 egg (beaten)
1/3 C canola oil

Mix wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Spray muffin tins (this recipe makes 24 small muffins). Fill and sprinkle with sugar crystals
(raw sugar). Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes… and enjoy!

© 2008 Karen Macinerney.com

Started out pretty good: I substituted white whole wheat flour for health reasons. Measured it, the sugar and the baking powder in the bowl. Don’t eat salt (health again) so left that out. Peeled an apple and put in food processor to get tiny pieces. 3/4 of a large apple? How much is that anyway? And what am I supposed to do with the other quarter? Besides, it was a medium apple, so the whole thing is going in.

Hmm. Don’t have cranberries. Will have to double up on the blueberries. A dry pint is probably a cup, right? Close enough. I don’t like nuts in muffins, so I decided to leave those out. I hate raisins in anything so I decided to leave those out. Eggs? Didn’t it say two? Cracked and in the bowl.

Looked at recipe. “Oh. One egg.”

Husband: “I saw you crack two.”

“Yeah, well, they were *small* eggs.”

Don’t have canola oil. Substituted grape seed oil. Wondered if it would be moist enough given that I used whole wheat flour. Well, I’ll just add some buttermilk. Put in half milk, half buttermilk for the 3/4 cup of milk and then to be sure they stayed moist added another splash of buttermilk. Yes, an unmeasured splash equal to *some amount of buttermilk.*

I’m supposed to be eating a tablespoon of flax seed each day for a condition called Dry Eye. Muffins seemed like a good place to put some, so I added a tablespoon of flax seed.

Yes, I remembered to sprinkle sugar on the top of the batches! Yay me!

When they were done, husband proclaimed them:

“Lots of blueberries.”
I said, “Well, I followed the recipe.” He looked at me so I added, “That’s a lie.”
He laughed.

I thought the first muffins to come out of the oven were a tad light on sugar (probably because of the whole wheat.) So I added a tablespoon of sugar to the leftover batter. The very last two muffins to go in didn’t have but a single blueberry so I decided to put chocolate chips in those.

That Karen MacInerney, she sure can cook. These are pretty good muffins! So glad she included the recipe!