Day One Hundred Seventy Six: Don't Underestimate Your Muffins

Tomorrow I have a breakfast meeting for a school charity gala.  One of my sweet friends guilted asked me to be a chairperson for the gala, and now I'm one of the people responsible for the party.  She swears it won't be much work, but I'm pretty sure she's figured out how to clone herself and hasn't shared it with the rest of us.  :watching you, Miss A:

For the other suckers moms at the meeting, I decided to make Martha's Jam-Filled Coffee Cake Muffins.  Because the name sounds promising, the recipe only makes a dozen muffins, and I was highly confident of my success, I planned to make two batches.

Instead of regular 'ole muffin/cupcake cups, the recipe uses fancy baking cups. These cups are about 3 inches wide and 2 inches deep.  I was frustrated, but not surprised, that I couldn't find the fancy baking cups anywhere.  :exasperated:  Instead, I used extra deep cupcake cups.  I estimated that they are roughly the same size of the fancy baking cups, so I figured they should work.

Following the recipe, I divided the mix into twelve cups, spooned jam into each cup, and topped with brown-sugar crumble.  Easy.  After about fifteen minutes of baking time, however, I started to smell something burning.  It was the muffins.  Apparently, my estimating skills are not so great.  :shrug:  The extra deep cupcake cups are not at all a satisfactory substitute for the fancy baking cups.  The result was that much of the muffin batter ended up at the bottom of my oven:

Muffins after they had cooled:

Not exactly the success I had originally imagined.

Thankfully, I had already planned to make a second batch...so I tossed the first batch and began again....

The second time, I used divided the muffin dough into twice as many cups.  Resulting muffins:

These are really, really good.  And I can say that with some confidence because that statement doesn't involve any estimating.