Or-or-ee-oooo, the Right Stuff.

Yesterday thanks to social networking I got my hands on  a recipe for Oreo muffins. In a past life I baked alot. It started in high school, around my Junior year when my over-loaded class schedule, extra circulars and after school job conspired to give me an ulcer. I would come home from school with a long list of to-dos and just bake a batch of cookies or something. It wasn't a comfort food thing. Sometimes I didn't eat any at all, but the baking process was comforting, I loved the warm kitchen with the smell of baked goods hanging in the air.

Between my grossly inadequate kitchen, my current inability to sit or stand very long and all the things that have to be done it's been years since I've even considered baking. Here's the recipe: http://www.kraftrecipes.com/recipes/oreo-muffins-53596.aspx

First I had to coarsely chop some cookies, so fun! Also, before you do anything else take the butter out to get soft this is very important.

A word to the wise if your house is anything like mine count out the necessary number of cookies for the muffins and one or two for yourself and put them somewhere you can keep an eye on them. I lost half a dozen to people breezing through the kitchen. It's better to leave your cookie pieces a little chunky.

Remember cook books? Me too I have a shelf full of them, but there's often a laptop on our kitchen table while someone is cooking. As convenient as laptops are, if your internet goes out or battery dies, you're stuck. I had one issue and panicked, and I still didn't print it out.

Yet again I thought that making muffins would be something the kids would want to help with, but I guess I didn't give them advanced enough warning because they were both out cold. Riley who rarely sleeps more than an hour has been recovering from a cold and sleeping longer. As far as big brother goes he discovered a channel that plays 80's cartoons in the wee hours of the morning. I can't really blame the kid for wanting to watch quality cartoons, but I've taken measures to prevent that from happening at 3am ever again. Isaac passed out college style in his science book:

Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth I decided to go for it on this inexplicably quiet weekend afternoon. The next step is mixing the dry ingredients. I was a little intimidated by the step that requires you "cut in" butter with a "pasty blender." After consulting Mike it turns out that all they mean is not to mix it super thoroughly, but to leave slivers of butter in the batter. It has something to do with the way it cooks. Also, a wire whisk works just fine for this.  

Another snag we hit was that our baking power was so old it was from a store that has been out of business for some time (maybe 6yrs). We didn't think it would matter, being only powdered chemicals, but the muffins were pretty dense and didn't puff up as much as we expected. They were still perfectly delicious, however. Mixing in the wet ingredients was pretty straight forward and as a nice surprise they only needed to be stirred "just until moistened". I hate mixing for 20 minutes, laughing maniacally as I press every lump between the spoon and the bowl.

And then they woke up. Notice the Oreo face, at least the cookie thieves shared. 

 Riley loves to cook. She "helps" Daddy in the kitchen all the time. She arrived just in time to help me gently stir in the cookies. She did that for a few minutes and then grew impatient and ran off with the salt. There's a sodium mound on her brother's floor courtesy of Miss Roo.

Once the cookies were added it was scooping time. I always have anxiety about this part because I once overfilled my muffin cups with disastrous consequences. This recipe specifically states to fill 12 cup evenly, so there you have it. Fill them all until there's no more batter and then bake.

Once they were in the oven (I got help with that part, thank you Mike.) it was Isaac's turn to help:

Spoon well licked. I went to lay down and my timer didn't go off so my muffins baked an extra 5minutes, but no harm done. I mentioned before if your baking powder is less than a decade old yours will be puffier. Drum roll....

And here's a baby enjoying them

And here's the mess (well I tiny part of it)

Don't you love my beautiful bowls? I love finding reasons to use them. So, yummy muffins were had by all and my love of baking is re-ignited, hurray!

On an related note we ate a lovely dinner of pork chops and rice prepared by Mike. I was done being upright and productive after muffins. We were all sitting around the table, and Isaac exclaimed "we should have a meat tree."  As I have not yet conquered the grocery store, my mind was spinning at the possibility of it, when he followed up with "Or! A money tree."

I told him I'd rather have the meat tree, since a money tree would most likely be stolen. That's when he amended the idea to, "No, it would be inside the house."  I was apparently in Debbie Downer mode, because I immediately pointed out that if there were a money tree in the house, we could never move and it would be hard to have company over, because we might think that they had taken some if it's money.  Isaac thought about this for a minute, and then he said, "No, it would be a public money tree and there would be money for everyone.

 Isaac finished his dinner and went off to ponder how to secure the money tree.

I wish him lots of luck with that task.