A Recipe For Your Tween!

EVENTUAL CORNBREAD MUFFINS

For when your 12-year-old gets the spontaneous urge to bake, right before dinner.

These are not our muffins. We were too busy weeping tears of joy while finally eating them.

These are not our muffins. We were too busy weeping tears of joy while finally eating them.

Ingredients

1 cup Super-Exasperating flour

1 tablespoon baking powder - or is it baking soda? WHY IS THIS SO HARD!?!

1⁄2 teaspoon salt  (the thing that life rubs into wounds.)

1⁄2 cup sugar

1 cup yellow cornmeal (plus extra for counter and floor.)

1⁄2 cup butter (or 4 tablespoons, cut from a stick, one tablespoon at a time, using 4 different utensils.)

3⁄4 cup milk

1 egg that you thought you might be out of and momentarily FREAKED OUT.

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 375º F. Argue with parents about another recipe that calls for 400˚F.
  2. Get out all ingredients above, and every single measuring cup, spoon, spatula, and mixing bowl to your family’s name. Place on counter. Flip hair.
  3. Get irritated when parents ask if they can help, because the rest of dinner will be ready in 15 minutes and these have to bake for 25.
  4. Grease muffin pans with cooking spray. Make it apparent that removing cooking spray cap is as difficult as lifting an anvil. Be sure cap shoots off across the kitchen narrowly missing the cat for dramatic effect.
  5. Stomp to pantry and back again.
  6. Pour 1 cup of cornmeal into a 1/3 measuring cup from a small, awkward hole in the cornmeal box at the most difficult angle possible. Spill approximately 1/3 cup on counter. Groan. Pour remaining 1/3 cup cornmeal into a ½ measuring cup because it's right there and it's still clean. Pour both approximated measuring cups into the mixing bowl. Huff while mom sweeps the remaining cornmeal off counter into the bowl with her hand and calls it good. 
  7. Mix dry ingredients together with sloth-like efficiency. Throw in a noise directed at your little brother that sounds like a cat growling underwater.         
  8. In nine separate bowls, melt butter, pour milk, and beat egg. Start by melting butter in the microwave in 5 second intervals over the course of 6 minutes. Gasp in exasperation when egg doesn’t break through a whisper-soft tap and the power of your mind. Combine.
  9. Stomp to pantry and back again with exaggerated hair flip.
  10. Add dry mixture to wet mixture and stir until just combined, over the course of what seems like 47 minutes.
  11. Refuse additional offers of assistance as the color drains from your family’s face in hunger and desperation.
  12. Slowly, and with the 627th clean spoon in the house, transfer batter into muffin pan, filling each cup all the way to the brim.
  13. Flail your arms in frustration when parent asks how full the muffin tins should be and you say 2/3 full.
  14. Glare at mother as she transfers extra batter into empty muffin tins to prevent a house fire from starting in the oven.
  15. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into a muffin comes out clean and the rest of the family has lost the will to live.
  16. Remove and serve hot. In delightful contrast to the rest of the meal, which is now cold.  
  17. ENJOY!!!