Internet Recipes Are Always An Adventure

I am a new and feverish devotee to Design*Sponge, and since I'm not ready to do my house overhaul yet, I did the next best thing and tried the muffin recipe they posted.  I volunteered to bring food to our biweekly office meeting, so I have a good way to get the baked goods out of the house, which is very important, else I eat all the goodies and stop baking things for fear of my lack of self control.

Two things about this recipe made it worth a try. One: I have more than a half gallon of pure maple syrup in my house from various trips to New England, and I don't like real maple syrup, I like diet Aunt Jemima. Two: the recipe involves sour cream, which I have always found makes for a very light and spongy cake. I want my muffins to rise to the top of my coworker's bellies, not sink to the bottom like a stone. The finished product looks pretty good, is pretty delicious, and is not at all a belly bomb, which is important when you are choosing snacks for an office meeting. 

I have a few very important notes on this recipe, though, in case you're interested in trying it out. First, this made 18 muffins baked in my standard sized cupcake tin, not 12. Also, you should probably fill your the batter up further than half way. Next, when she says "generously spoon topping over muffin batter," I'd say it's more like "make sure the topping runneth over your cup." I was appalled at the amount of topping I spooned on, going back several times more than I thought wise, and I still had about a third of the stuff left over. But when they came out of the oven, I saw that the cupcakes could have even used a bit more. Lastly, and very importantly, these little puppies took waaaaay longer than 10-12 minutes. It was more like 17-20 minutes... I don't know how to explain that, except that maybe the author of the recipe has a very hot oven? To balance out her her very cool baking sheets and fancy paper baking cups?

Still they were delicious, and a happy departure from the usually blueberry muffin or coffee cake. I would recommend them for a food to bring to a brunch, since they are they are so easy to transport -- no anxiety over crushed cupcake icing necessary!

I think I'll store them in the microwave until I need to bring them to work on Wednesday. Don't want them to dry out, or get too soggy. Mr. SevPrez used to tease me for keeping the good bread in the microwave, but now he does it too. It's like the ultimate tupperware!