From the Department of Redundancy Department, this just in:

I love muffins.

Sometimes, I delight myself by thinking of all the different compartments in my wee little head. They’re kinda like muffins in a muffin tin. And loathe as I am to mix a metaphor, I have painted myself into a corner, and now must have 12 head compartments. My head is, apparently, a standard 12-cup muffin tin.

Here goes nothin’:

1. My Children.
2. This Blog.
3. Book Proposal {oh cr*p, due soon}.
4. My Book.
5. My Husband.
6. June Celiac Camp Weekend Plans
7. Master’s Degree in Social Work
8. New Recipes {see nos. 1., 2., & 3. above}
9. You.
10. General Mills {You’ll see, hopefully}.
11. Getting a prepared version of something like these to market.
12. My Children {there are 3 of them, so really this should be a baker’s dozen}.

See? I’m compartmentalizing. My mind is made of muffins. That might explain a lot, come to think of it.

I’m pausing for a moment of quiet reflection. My mind is a standard 12-cup muffin tin. It’s not mini-muffins. T’anks Gosh.

What’s in your compartments?

Is each compartment self-contained? Do the cups overfloweth, or are they neat & clean-eth?

I have realized that my cups are a mess. I have messy cups. I’m over it. I’m cool with it. Messy cups it is, then.

Let’s take Cup #5, for instance.

Cup #5 should be a help with the other cups when he’s around, right? In theory, he’s a huge help. Another set of hands, another pair of eyes. Another pair of arms to hug a particularly happy or particularly sad Cup #1 or 12. Another pair of lips to plant one on a skinned knee. He loves the children terribly, and he is not allergic to doing dishes. He’s my taste-tester, albeit a bit of a subtle one. And he’s the biggest Shoestring Fan you’ll ever find {and not just because of the taste-testing benefits}.

But Cup #5 doesn’t have his own standard 12-cup tin, you see. The contents of his would-be cups are all mixed up together, like an unsliced brownie pan. An unbaked pan of brownies. His cups are batter. Batter up! Somewhere in there is the reason that Cup #5 is like this.

So what about your muffin tin? What do you have to keep track of in your life?

To torpedo the metaphor, can we talk for a moment about these Chocolate Muffins?

Just when I think that everything that ever should be baked has already been baked, and chronicled on the Internet, I go looking for someone else’s recipe for Gluten-free Chocolate Muffins — and come up empty. I wanted to make lightly sweet, terribly tender and moist cocoa breakfast muffins without chocolate chips. And I didn’t wanna come up with  my own recipe. I just wanted to fill my cups with the fruits of someone else’s labor. Is that so much to ask?

Apparently, it is.

I swear, I came up empty. My actual, non-metaphorical muffin cups were empty.

So I had to do it myself. But now it’s done! And now we have it. And now I want to eat these every single day of my life. They are so moist & tender on the inside, almost chewy on the outside. They’re lightly sweet, just like I wanted, & they come bearing no chocolate chips. The line between muffin and cupcake is thin, but I’m pretty sure if you include chocolate chips, you’ve entered cupcake territory. Who knows. I don’t know. I just know what I was going for, and it wasn’t chocolate chips.

I made these with peppermint extract, and they are heavenly to me and my Cup #s 1., 5., and 12., but you should feel free to use vanilla extract instead.

So tell me about your cups, and I’m not talkin’ about braziers {but we can talk about that, too, if you like; remember — I keep mine on a belt organizer}.

What’s in your muffin cups, lovely friends?

xoxo
Nicole