The Muffin Disaster and How I Lived To Tell About It

I know the title is so dramatic but these muffins are full of drama.

 A few days ago I decided I was going to make some big ol blueberry muffins for some friends the next morning.   I put together a recipe, threw on my Brooklyn Nets apron and headed to the kitchen to start to put all the ingredients together.  

The batter was amazing.   When the batter reaches the point of a certain yumminess, then you know what you’re making is going to be the best ever.  I took a few tastes of the batter.  Perfect.  I was feeling pretty good about myself.

I averaged the muffin to take 20 minutes so I pulled them out.  The muffins were gorgeous.  They were big.  The crumb worked out so good on top.   My kitchen was smelling like a bakery.  I set them aside to cool and skipped across my loft singing to myself about my perfect blueberry muffins.  I was on muffin cloud nine.

It was time to pull the muffins out, so I got my light ready to shoot some pictures for the blog.   Still, extremely excited, I could not wait to show you guys these muffins. I already had the post written in my mind, I was ready to Instagram the heck out of these blueberry bad boys.

Then disaster happened.

The muffins would not come out.

I slide a knife down.  I slide a small fork down.  I slide a baby spatula down.  I cut them slightly incase the crumb was attaching them all together.  Nothing.  I panicked.  I shook my fist to the muffin gods “This is not happening to me!”.  I put the pan upside down and decided that I would just hit the bottom and then they would fall out. After all, I sprayed these babies with nonstick spray.  This was totally going to work.  It did not work.  

It happened.  The muffins were a failure.  

The muffins started to come out of the pan, one berry at a time, one crumb at a time, one tear at a time.

I sighed.  I cried.  I laughed.  I posted on Twitter.  I told my cats (they didn’t understand).   Then I told myself to breathe, it was going to be ok.  I thought of Olivia Pope and how she’s a fixer and at that moment I decided I was going to fix these muffins.  They would not destroy my spirits!

(Xanadu finds staring at the wall more important than this muffin disaster).

Ok, what to do?  I have a bunch of muffin crumbs.    I could put it in a pie pan, layer it with whipped cream and berries.  But I didn’t have whipped cream or berries.  That wasn’t going to work.  Ok, Pamela, think, rule these muffins, show them who’s boss.  Fix this.  So I stood in that kitchen, eating spoonfuls of this muffin crumb mixture because honestly, it was still amazing.  Then it hit me.

Muffin Balls were born.

I got all the muffin crumbs together and mashed them up with a fork so there was no big pieces.    Then I rolled them into little balls. The key to this is that your muffins need to be moist to stick together.  Thankfully these muffins were beautifully moist (*cries again*) so it worked great.   After I rolled them into little balls I put them on some wax paper.   The muffin balls tasted awesome, but they were kinda well.. a big ugly.   What makes things pretty?  Powdered sugar in frosting form.  So I made up a quick batch of vanilla glaze frosting and poured it gently over the muffin balls.    They looked magical.

Boom Shakalaka Muffin Balls.  Boom Shakalaka. 

And even better?  People loved these muffin balls, they wanted to know more about them.   “So you’re going to make muffins, destroy them, and then roll the into balls.  Yes, you heard me right, yes I totally meant to do this.  I know,  they’re really something special. ” Play it cool.     People have requested them again since that day so now these accidental Muffin Balls seem to be a staple in my recipe book. 

And what’s how I destroyed my muffins but lived to tell about it.

Now tell me about your baking accident that you fixed.  Did you have a cake fall apart?  Did you have brownies that were too wet inside?   Share your stories in the comments, I’m sure others will be inspired by your creative thinking!