My lady: hey honey, whatcha doing?

(ok, sometimes “whatcha doing” is a totally innocuous and enjoyable phrase, and sometimes it’s a precursor to don’t get mad at me but I signed us up for an interpretive dance class with Carl and Suzanne you just need to get to know them just because he’s a racist doesn’t mean he’s all bad can you please learn to get along with him I really need this promotion why don’t you love me?!?!)

Adam (suspiciously): ummm, nothing, what’s going on?

My lady (batting her eyes adorably): so you know how everyone at work looooves your cooking?

(oh shit, the volume and intensity of the eye bats is directly proportional to the favor that is about to be asked.  And my lady is the queen of eye bats.  Like Jedi master level.)

Adam: yes, you’ve told me that.

My lady: well, every day until the end of the year someone is bringing in food for the entire department, and our day is Wednesday.

(ok, so first off, we don’t work together, so technically it’s not our day, but we’re a team, so ok yeah it is get off my back.

Second, my lady has told me that the only thing she makes in the kitchen is mashed potatoes – she makes very good ones, btw.  So, unless we are making three tons of mashed potatoes, I’m going to be doing a fair amount of work in the kitchen pretty soon.)

My lady: and did I mention how handsome you are?

(at this point, unless she said, so would you mind going downtown to meet Tuco Salamanca to buy the weapons-grade anthrax he promised he would get me, I’m pretty much going to do whatever she wants.  I’m a boy, I’m putty in her hands when she says things like that.)

So now, what to make.  Before we moved to Houston, I saved a bunch of breakfast recipes onto my Paprika app, since I figured I could have actual breakfasts working from home.  I also forgot to account for the fact that I am really lazy and would rather pour a bowl of cereal than spend more than four seconds beating an egg or warming up a pan at 6:30 a.m.

I did, however, try out a few recipes during evening hours.  These maple muffins were the clear winner of the few I gave a shot.  I like them because they’re actual muffins, and not the overgrown dough monstrosities that Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts bake and try to pass off as muffins.  “Oh, you did not want to consume 75% of your RDA of calories in this gigantomuffin?  Mixing all the chocolate and three pounds of blueberries into your breakfast pastry does not sound appealing to you?  What do you have against America?  Commie!!”

But these are great, they almost taste like little pancakes with the syrup baked into them, and they’re pretty easy to make.  Plus, the recipe comes from a Canadian site, and they know their maple syrup.

As with all baking recipes, don’t mess around with the ingredients and volumes unless you really know what you’re doing.  You’re reading my blog.  You don’t know what you’re doing.

ENOUGH ALREADY, CAN I MAKE A MESS WITH THIS RECIPE??

Anything related to baking has the potential for a mess.

OOH, HOW SO?

Well, if you pick too small of a bowl to mix everything together in, then the flour is going to fly everywhere.  Also, when you sprinkle the topping on, there’s about a 0% chance that it will all land on the muffins themselves – personally, I would cut back on the amount of flour and sugar in it.

WAIT, YOU JUST TOLD ME NOT TO MESS WITH THE RECIPE?

Yeah, I know, it’s just for the topping, it’s not going to mess up the muffin itself.  Forget I mentioned it.