Sunday Sugar Rush

This morning, despite the fact that it’s a Sunday, I was up and at ‘em at 7:30AM. If you know me at all, you know how weird this is. I am not a morning person. I will never, ever get up before 9AM unless I am required to do so by work, appointments, or yoga class (which, let’s face it, might as well not even exist at this point given my inability to work out, but that’s another story). In any case, I was all energy and joy, doing laundry and tidying and reading crap on the internet.

And this morning, my most awesome friend and B-dos partner-in-crime Angela was also in an energized weekend mood – and had posted that she was baking muffins.

A perfect activity for a sunny Sunday, no? I slightly modified the recipe she’d posted and these were the results!

Sunday Sugar Rush Muffins

• 2C flour
• 1/2C white sugar
• 3t baking powder
• 1/2t salt
• 1/2C semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1/2C toffee chips
• 3/4C milk
• 1/4C vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• 1.5T white sugar
• 1T brown sugar

First off, heat your oven to 400F. Grease the bottoms of a dozen muffin cups or two dozen mini muffin cups – which is the direction I went this AM. So adorable!

In your main bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt, then mix well. Throw in the chocolate chips – go with mini editions if you have ‘em – and toffee chips (aka Skor bits). In a separate small bowl, whisk up your milk, oil, and egg. Slowly stir your wet stuff into the dry mix, blending carefully.

Whisk together your remaining tablespoons of sugar in a tiny bowl. Fill your muffin cups most of the way to the top, then sprinkle each wee one with the sugary mix. (It kills me that I’ve never thought to do this before! Of course this is why I love certain bakery muffins so very much – the cooked sweet stuff on the top is both darling and heavenly and I will most definitely be adding this step to future muffin recipes!)

Bake for 20-25 minutes. Et voila!

Things I loved about this recipe:

1. It took exactly as long for the oven to heat up as it did for me to both make the muffins and fill the cups. Talk about good timing!
2. It made exactly the amount of baked goodness promised. I hate it so much when a recipe gives you batter for, say, sixteen muffins. It weirds me out to put a tray in the oven with only four holes filled! I know this is a weird OCD thing, hah, but it’s so convenient when the quantities match the pan.
3. They rose perfectly! It always irritates me that my cupcakes never seem to rise enough – muffins FTW!
4. The muffins were ready in no time flat – Dave still hasn’t woken up yet!
5. Clean-up took about a minute, as it required so few dishes.

Things I’d try differently in future editions:

1. Do half white flour, half whole wheat flour. I was fully going white-bread-style this morning, but half whole wheat tends to still taste like normal baked goods while giving it a nutrition bump.
2. Add a few tablespoons of flax seeds to up the nutritional value overall – even the stuff that’s not particularly good for you can be a bit good for you!
3. Variation: Apple toffee chip muffins. Replace the chocolate chips with a chopped up apple (probably only half an apple really, whatever equates to half a cup of bits), add cinnamon and nutmeg to the dry batter, and put some cinnamon into the sugary sprinkled topping.

I am eating one now – yes, already! – and they’re a perfect Sunday morning treat. Now if only I could have coffee, my life would be complete.