Survival Sunday: De-bake-cals and Deliciousness

As you may have noticed, it sometimes takes me a while to get around to things I want to do. Sometimes, this is from pure laziness, (okay, that's usually why things don't get done) but sometimes I fail to finish things in a timely manner simply because I absolutely cannot. This has been the case with the oft-spoken of muffins. I haven't had the time, space, or ingredients to make the chocolate breakfast muffins I wanted to.

So I waited. I made ramen bowl after ramen bowl, tried udons and flying-fish-flavored soups, and I really enjoyed myself! I'm hoping you guys enjoyed my kitchen foibles, too.

But today, it happened. I saw that the kitchen was empty. No one was in it. No one wanted me to grab anything for them. I didn't even grab coffee. I just went for it. And lo, the cocoa powder was in the right place, and while I did have to hunt for the light brown sugar, it all came together in the end! I was super stoked. I gathered all of my ingredients into one place, readied my hastily-scrawled recipe card, cracked out my phone to take pictures with and went to work.

They're a jumbled mess, but here are my ingredients, and lucky me!
We had only 2 eggs left in the older container!

Now, after putting all of your ingredients where you can easily reach them, the next most important steps are to set up your baking vessel and preheat the oven. I had a bunch of paper liners for my muffin tin, but you can absolutely use silicone if that's what you prefer. That's kinda what they exist for, right? Anywho, I lined my tin, spritzed the liners with a little cooking spray because I'm an idiot, and then set that aside. I cranked the oven up to the required 350℉, washed my hands, and set about measuring my dry ingredients!

I'm not sure why there was 1 white paper liner, but it was the only one.
There were also exactly 12 liners left.
This is less weird than the eggs, since they come in packs of 60, and we've had these for years.
And our muffin tins have 12 pots per pan, so...
Multiples of 12.
Math.
Yay.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think that 350℉ is about 175℃
I have an American oven to work with, so I use Fahrenheit.
I also use Cups, Teaspoons, etc. I don't own a kitchen scale.
I'd certainly like to, though...

Imperial griping aside, I then started on measuring out my ingredients. I used one of the medium-large bowls we have and put each dry ingredient into that bowl. For wet ingredients, I had a large Pyrex measuring cup with a spout and everything. All the wet stuff went in there, got mixed up and then mixed into the dry ingredients waiting in the bowl.

2/3 cups Cocoa Powder

2 cups flour
If you want that flour to come out right, you really have to sprinkle it into the cup.
And yes, a scale would be more helpful, but we've already established that I don't have one.

1 1/4 cups Light Brown Sugar

1 tsp baking soda, 3/4 tsp salt
Oh... I hope it was just 1 tsp baking soda...
I'll let you know when I try one :|

1 cup Chocolate Chips

Mixed Everything Together!

2 large eggs

2/3 Cup Milk

1/3 cup vegetable oil (because I didn't have unsalted butter)

2 tsp Vanilla Extract

2 tsp vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar)

That looks nice.
And blurry.
I mixed it all together. Use a fork.
Spoons don't displace the yolk enough.

So now that I've got my wet combined, my dry combined, and both sets of ingredients put together, we have to combine them!

Looks nice... I guess

I promise, it's blurry for a reason.

Why is my combination photo blurry? Because that batter is like extra-thick cement. Seriously. It's ridiculous how thick it is. I had to keep adding tiny splashes of milk just to get it to move in the bowl. And don't even get me started on how hard it was to put in the cups. It was a nightmare. If you have a pastry bag on hand, use it for this. Trust me. It was hellacious with a pair of spoons. It took forever. I utterly botched one, but I left it anyway.

It's the slightly 'roidy looking cup in the back.

After baking for a minute or so, since I thought I'd forgotten to take a pic.

Baked! I hope.
UPDATE: Yes. Baked. Hopefully, that includes roidy McGoo up there on the left...

Okay, now the true test: I'm going to go and try one. I hope they don't suck!

...

Yay! they don't suck! They're definitely sweet, and the littlest one might be a bit overbaked and a little dry, but... they're not bad at all! Definitely give these a try. Just... maybe don't try to take pictures of things while you're baking if it's your first time trying, lol!

So yeah, that'll do it for me!

Go Enjoy Something!!!
FC