Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Have I mentioned that we currently have 1:00 church?

For my not-of-my-faith friends, this means we are at church from 1-4 on Sunday afternoons for the year; not a big deal in a lot of ways, but when you spend the last hour of it wrestling a two-year-old, you don’t exactly come home bursting with energy with which to make dinner.  Which is why, this past Sunday, I put it to a vote–I could make cornbread (an old standby) or try a new recipe, but we were having some sort of breakfast bread for dinner.  My hubby doesn’t particularly care, not being nearly as into brinner as I am, so the girlies’ vote carried the day, and I went looking for something new to try.

My initial choice got rejected because I didn’t have enough dead bananas; these Caramel Apple Muffins, however, sounded interesting, and they used some of the OLD caramels I mentioned having in my pantry.  (They were expired, but I don’t think it made much of a difference.  I didn’t have to melt them, which was key.)  Other than using part whole wheat flour–I don’t imagine that surprises anyone anymore, does it?–I mostly followed the recipe.  (I subbed 1/2 t nutmeg for some of the cinnamon and used most of the apple, which was considerably more than the recipe called for.)  And they weren’t bad, although the streusel melted down into the muffins and the caramels melted out and they had cracks and fissures galore.  Everybody ate theirs willingly, and the girlies wanted some for breakfast the next morning; I ate at least four, which is possibly why I’m not losing the rest of the baby weight as fast as I might like.  My one beef with them was that I wanted more flavor.  The bites with the streusel in them were lovely, since they tasted of brown sugar, butter, and oatmeal, but the bites without wanted to be a little richer than they were.  I don’t love store caramels, which might be largely the problem–when you grow up eating my dad’s homemade caramels, there’s just no going back–but the spices were actually less prominent than I thought they might be.  I’m not sure why.

Ah, well.  I ended up moving it to my ‘On the Fence’ Pinterest board, so I may try them again.  If so, I’ll let you know!