So, so much for soups. It's bread time. Although I have discovered that by 'bread', my recipe book contributors mostly meant 'muffins' and other surreptitiously breakfast-y items. Given, in the roster of possible breakfasts, things like muffins tend to rise to the top for me, but still. Didn't we just finish with this business? Well, apparently not.
Muffin recipe number one was for 'Quick, delicious, possibly healthy chocolate muffins' by Becky Rose, female matriarch of the Rose/Schwab family, Huntington friends from Camp Unistar--a place where hippie families like to go to wear kilts and play the flute and get swarmed by mayflies and contract lyme disease.
I kid, I kid. Unistar is a great place, and Becky is cool. Plus, she's a vet. Perhaps I could have called her earlier this week, but let's not get into that business again.
This is a pretty simple recipe, as you will see. So simple that perhaps it would be logical to assume that even I couldn't mess it up. Well, that might be wishful thinking. That is to say, the muffins didn't come out bad, per se, but they certainly didn't come out life-changing. Maybe they're not supposed to be? Maybe they're just a delightful guilty pleasure for chocolate lovers? And, big surprise, I'm not a chocolate lover. I'm not a chocolate hater - don't freak out - I just don't care that much about it either way usually. I know this confuses you. I am a very complex woman.
Also, although you can't tell from the name of these muffins, they actually use pumpkin. In fact, were I to name them, I would call them 'chocolate pumpkin muffins.' Then again, that might set up the unreasonable expectation that you can taste the pumpkin in them, which sadly you cannot. This may be my fault, however, as the recipe calls for '2 cans' of pumpkin (here is where we get into whether I screwed them up or not). I shopped for this bad boy at the ghetto grocery, which appeared to be under some re-inventoryizing (Upgrading from ghetto status? Oh, how I hope!) when I was there. As a result, I had to comb the aisles several times only to find giant cans of canned pumpkin.
Now, under normal circumstances, it would be reasonable to assume that I would have no idea they were giant and get two of them and then promptly overload the recipe on pumpkin and make it taste horrid. However, as a dog owner, I know from canned pumpkin. This is because it is the secret cure all if your dog's ass is exploding. Didn't expect that, did you?
That is to say, if your dog has the doggie runs, then you give him canned pumpkin (which he will enjoy) to bind him up. Also, if your dog enjoys eating inappropriate things, like, say, your underwear, that have a tendency to get caught up in the digestive process, then you might give him pumpkin with the hopes of battering-ramming the offending item out. I may have had to do this once or 200 times before. Maybe.
As a result, I was aware that the can was a giant one. So I bought one, reasoning it was probably twice the size of standard canned pumpkin cans. Of course, I don't actually know that for sure. All I know is that my giant pumpkin can was over 1 lb of canned pumpkin. So let's just hope that whatever '2 cans' of canned pumpkin would be, it's in the neighborhood of 1 lb. I think it must be, because the muffins didn't come out weirdly over-pumpkined. In fact, if anything, they were under-pumpkined. That is to say, they are very moist, which is nice, but they don't taste particularly pumpkin-y. They do, however, manage to leave a crazy orange/yellow stain on the napkin when you hold them.
Are you bored yet?
I know. You think these look amazing, don't you? Chocolate fiends.Quick, Delicious, Possibly Healthy Chocolate Muffins
1 box chocolate cake mix
2 cans pumpkin
Combine. Bake in greased muffin tins. Wonder how long and how high you are supposed to bake. Be thankful that they tell you on the chocolate cake box. The end.
You know what I bet this wants (says the premature recipe-modifier), is some pumpkin pie spice. And possibly chocolate chips, if one is into that sort of thing. But I think definitely the spice not being in there is perhaps why you don't taste the pumpkin itself much. I am in a baking frenzy today, so perhaps I'll give that a try and report back.
ReplyDeleteI look forward to hearing how the modifications go. Do keep me posted!
ReplyDeleteThat is just too simple to sound good at all. I have a great recipe for Chocolate Pumpkin Muffins (and yes, that is the official title) and those are yummy. I think I'll stick with my recipe, thanks.
ReplyDeleteThe idea sounds great, but I'd love to get some pumpkin flavor for my trouble (and not just digestional assistance). Manda-X, any luck?
ReplyDeleteOkay, wow. I added 2 teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice (made at home by combining 4 parts ground cinnamon, 2 parts ground ginger, 1 part ground cloves, and 1 part ground nutmeg, but I'm sure you could use commercially-blended stuff), and because I was a little concerned that all that spice would overwhelm the chocolate (um, yes, that's totally why, uh huh), I folded in a half-bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips. Baked for about 22 minutes at 325 degrees.
ReplyDeleteAnd oh em gee, they turned out fantastic. The spices brought back some of the pumpkin flavor, and I don't even think you have to add the chips for it to be chocolatey enough, but they certainly don't detract, especially if you are a chocolate fiend like myself. I'll ship some over to Iraq in this next care package, and we'll see how they hold up; the molasses ginger cookies will go in this shipment too.
Incidentally, I fed one of these to my three-year-old son Dimitri, who is having a bit of tummy upset today (enough that his preschool called and said he should not attend tomorrow, though he's not acting terribly sick). I asked him if he liked the muffin, if it tasted good to him. "No," he said, and continued demolishing it.