If you celebrate Easter, I hope you had a great Easter weekend! I went to an Easter egg hunt at my brother and sister-in-law’s house, as well as a friend’s bday bbq, and also a fun family dinner in the city!
For the Easter egg hunt, I volunteered to make muffins and also deviled eggs (not pictured). Why would I ever volunteer to bake muffins when anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that I am …. not reliable in the kitchen!? Even if I try to GAF? As I have mentioned before, I am terrible but hopeful!
First up was Joy the Baker’s recipe for Maple Syrup Pancake Muffins. This looked like a fun challenge to me for reasons twofold: 1) BROWN BUTTER. I have never browned butter before. I should have googled it before attempting it. 2) Maple lemon glaze. Making a glaze sounds extra fancy, and you know how fancy I am…
So about that brown butter….
This was my first attempt. Let’s remember that I DO NOT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT COOKING/BAKING, and I didn’t know if, like, ALL the butter would turn brown or what! Cuz that’s what it sounds like to me! I was like, “Manda! Does this look like brown butter!? Is this brown butter!?” And she acted completely disgusted and said, “I would NEVER brown butter!” As it turns out, small bits will start turning brown, and that’s what is supposed to happen and that’s when you pull it off the heat. It should look like nutty brown bits suspended in butter. The whole thing will not turn brown. JUST THE BITS. If you let it go too long, you get the above burned up debacle, which will henceforth be known as the buttery char of Satan.
So, I started again, AFTER googling brown butter, and all was well. For the moment.
I forgot to grab a lemon at the store for the maple glaze, so I ran outside with a flashlight and grabbed a Meyer lemon off my tree. As much as I suck in the kitchen, I probably suck MORE in the garden, and my lemon tree is more like a luxury spider condo filled with horrible disgusting THICK spider webs but also some lovely fruits. I plucked the least gnarly lemon off the tree and ran back inside screaming and flapping my arms all over myself. Manda was like IS THERE A SPIDER ON YOU WHAT IS GOING ON!?!?? But it was just that yucky feeling of having walked through ten million spider webs Indiana-Jones style.
The lemon turned out to be super juicy and delightful, so at least the spider dance was worth it.
Here’s me dipping my muffins in some bad ass glaze.
So here’s something else I have to keep telling myself while baking: TRUST THE TOOTHPICK. Sometimes I’ll stick a toothpick in my baked goods before pulling them out of the oven, and the toothpick comes out clean, but I feel like the baked good is still mushy and I’ll leave it in the oven more. Self: STOP DOING THAT. TRUST THE TOOTHPICK. Sadly, most things I bake end up over-done. Sorry, Joy the Baker. I’m trying.
To make things double-worse, I made a second batch of muffins. This time, Nigella Lawson’s Double Chocolate-Chip Muffins. I told myself: YOU PULL THOSE OUT OF THE OVEN AFTER TWENTY MINUTES NO MATTER WHAT NO MATTER WHAT!!!! When the timer on my iPhone went off (I was using my phone, cuz Manda was asleep and the oven timer is really loud)…
… I was in the middle of cleaning up the kitchen and trying to find a place to put the sugar. I got obsessed with finding the sugar a good place in the freezer (and throwing away mysterious unlabeled frozen objects with frustration) that I forgot to take the dang muffins out of the oven. They were probably three minutes over and not really springy on top anymore. Sorry, Nigella Lawson. I’m trying. Even though I forgot to sprinkle more chocolate chips on the tops of the muffins before putting them in the oven. Shhhhhh…
I’m not a complete disaster, and I’m not burning anything (except brown butter, I GUESS…), but I can’t seem to master this kitchen thing. I would like to say it’s cuz IDGAF, but I kinda do, and I’m working on it! Whatever!!!
I’m gonna conclude with a photo of a cute baby to pander to all the baby-lovers. This is my nephew and me on Easter. He just woke up from a nap, and we played ball and danced around, but he told me “No” when I started dancing. WHAT’S NEW!?
