Muffin Tops

Before I dive into the 'meat' of my latest culinary fiasco, I should make it clear I am speaking literally about muffin tops and NOT the fat parts of my waist that bulge over the top of my pants creating a 'well baked' effect, and causing me to lament about not working out enough.

So, my latest culinary delight...more accurately, fiasco. I was having 'the girls' over for an evening of Big Love, Movies, and chit chat. In keeping with Steve and my agreement (which is to use all the food in our pantry before buying anymore 'pantry food'), I decided to bake some muffins for my guest and use up some of the pantry goods. Kill 2 birds with 1 stone, so-to-speak. So I dug up the old family recipe for oatmeal toffee muffins from the dusty vault in my memory (I feel obligated to emphasize it was VERY dusty, so you judge me a little less as your read, and feel more pity than disgust at this posts conclusion) and pulled out the necessary supplies. A bag of Skor toffee baking bits and a bag of oatmeal muffin mix. Okay, its not really an old family recipe, but the ingredients were in the pantry (in keeping with the deal) and made for a good indulgence for my story. Play along! Where was I? Oh yes... I pulled out the ingredients, mixed them together, poured the batter into the mini muffin pan (I make minis cause they are so darn cute) and then had an unfortunate realization. I forgot to grease the muffin pan. "SHIT!" I exclaimed. I really did. Out loud. Kahlen gave me a disapproving look, then went back to chewing on her stuffed hippo. "Darn it!" I corrected. Being the lazy baker I am, rather than removing the batter, cleaning the muffin pan, greasing it, and repouring the batter I say "Meh, Im sure it'll be fine" to myself. It is NOT fine. I cant get the muffins out of the pan. No, that is a lie. I CAN get them out, but when Im done with them they no longer resemble muffins. They look more like a pile of discarded muffin crumbs. Which I suppose is essentially what they become, so its fitting. I try in vain to scoop a few out, to salvage just a few, to serve my guests. No dice. Each attempt produces a more pathetic excuse for a muffin than the last. So I give up, put a tea towel on top of the muffin pan (to hide the evidence from my guests) and forgot about the fiasco until my guests left.

Then I engaged in full blown shame spiral... I ate the tops off the muffins. Out of the pan. In my undies (okay I made that part up but it makes for a better story). They were DE-LISH!

And, once I was sufficiently stuffed with muffin tops I left the muffin pan on the coffee table, waddled to bed and had a great sleep. The next day, I looked at the pan. "Shameful," I muttered to myself. I moved the pan from the living room, to the kitchen, and unceremoniously dumped it, face down, in the sink and forgot about it. I finally decided to deal with the pan tonight. The muffins were not only baked on/in, but were now stale and even more stuck on (which I didn't think was even possible) cause the toffee bits melted and then hardened after spending some time in the sink! So I grabbed a spoon, turned on Days of Our Lives (Beau and Hope, just get back together already!), and proceeded to scoop the crusted, stale, remnant muffin bottoms from the pan. Glamourous!

I suppose the point of this post is to... uhhhh.... no point really. Anyone have any ideas about the moral of this story? Suggestions welcome. Be kind though. I may be a terrible baker, but I have feelings. Ha!