Donut Muffins (AKA My Mojo, Baby)

I lost my mojo, baby. Where did my kitchen mojo go? It is swimming with the fishes somewhere in New Jersey for all that I know. All I know is that it hasn't been in my kitchen as of late. 1st there were the margarita and daiquiri cookies that were so-so. Then the chilled cherry soup was a little on the tart side and while I was able to make it better with chocolate, it still needed more “umph.” Then last night, 2 more kitchen “blah”s.

Of course, the one thing I made phenomenally this week, I don’t have pictures or a recipe for. I made a weeknight classic, mooch, a few nights ago, but since I was cooking and eating with the boy, I didn’t measure or take pictures, as he doesn’t like me spending quality us time or eating time using the camera. As he put it “since when does my girl take pictures of food?” Ok, I’ll give him that, I usually just want to eat the food. But mooch is a delicious combination of shell pasta with meat sauce so that the shells often fill with the pieces of meat (in this case a combination of turkey and ground beef). I also added small pieces of mozzarella and garlic and topped with parmesan. It is great and I will eventually post on it. So, I have some cooking goodness left in me. Just not last night.

Last night we had Chinese food delivered, so no dinner disaster. But I had a ton of ingredients that I specifically bought for a new recipe for this week, and they were going to go bad if I waited too long, so I went back and made that dish. It turned out like this.
Is it the green goblin? No, it is my interpretation of what is supposedly a great recipe. I will write about it either this weekend or Monday, but major brownie points to anyone who can guess what it is. As I saw that this was not going to turn out to be an appetizing dish, I KNEW I was having a bum cooking/baking time. But, I had already promised the boy and his room mates muffins. So I was back into the kitchen for yet another try.

The guys decided they wanted donut muffins, a recipe I saw on a blog earlier that day (I won’t note the blog here because I am less than thrilled with the recipe and I do not want to be hurtful to anyone).

I got out all the ingredients and noticed, “Hey, I didn’t pull out any leaveners.” No baking soda, no baking powder, nothing. I just assumed the recipe was correct and that the egg would puff the muffins up a bit. I am now almost positive that the person just forgot to list the leavener he or she used. Ya, MINOR detail, right?
I mixed the muffins, then poured them into 12 muffin tins greased with pam. I then baked. What did I see while they baked? This.
Ya, no puffy muffiny-ness at all. Solid, non-rising dough mass. Not at all yummy. I felt like banging my head on a wall. The kitchen curse had continued. I took them out of the oven and got the muffin weights out of their pans. I used a silicone pastry brush to cover the top and part of the sides with butter, then dipped them in cinnamon sugar. This made the weights seem much more edible. Still, I couldn’t eat 3 bites of one without feeling sick.
I took them over to the boy and as he lead me to his apartment I explained about the lack of leavener and the fact that they would be better for liftting to build upper body strength and that they may taste best if you cut off the bottom and just ate the top half (less weight and more butter and sugar). He took one and gave another one to each of his room mates. Their reactions “YUM! OH these are good! Just what I wanted!” WHAT!? WHAT!? Where did this come from? These things were kind of nasty, yet they loved them? Do I have that weird of taste? I just left the muffins there and told the guys to go at it, I’d pick up the plate the next day.

So, while my kitchen mojo wasn’t fully restored, it wasn’t as badly bruised as I thought. Lesson learned, even if you don’t like what you made, someone else very well may love it, so give it away. I am very hesitant, but I will be back in the kitchen soon, I swear!

Tips for next time: I wouldn’t make these again. If you want to, I would switch the whole wheat back to AP flour. I would add a leavener to the dry ingredients.
Donut Muffins
1 cup All Purpose flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/4 cup oil

2/3 cup sugar

1 egg

3/4 cups milk

Topping:

1/2 cup butter, melted

3/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon (mix with the sugar)

Preheat to 350 degrees F. In a bowl combine the flours, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. In a separate bowl combine the oil, sugar, egg, and milk. Add the liquids to the dry ingredients and stir until just mixed. Pour into standard size muffin tin and bake for 20-25 minutes. Turn the muffins out of tins. While still warm, dip the muffin tops in the melted butter and then in the cinnamon sugar mixture.