Muffins Elude Me

So, I like to bake. I've been doing so much of it lately, that I decided I would make a little blog about it for my own amusement. Besides, I've just got loads of free time on my hands! Why not add another task to the to-do list? All sarcasm aside, I decided I would kick off with my most recent food stuff: muffins.

For the past few weeks, I had been keeping a lustful eye on the bake ware in Williams-Sonoma, a cooking store in the mall where I 'work'. The hand-held Kitchen Aid mixers, the perforated baguette pan, the loaf pans (of many different sizes, most notably the miniature ones that would make giving bread away very easy to do), the pastry board, and the muffins pans. Now, I don't really eat muffins. I don't care for them. I don't actually eat many of the things I bake, to tell you the truth. When I do, I don't really taste anything special. An exception to this was a certain batch of chocolate chip cookies I gave a friend for Christmas; I have yet to re-create that symphonic miracle. Yet, for some reason, I have felt to urge to being learning how to make really great muffins. My 'paycheck' last week was far larger than I anticipated, and I decided that I would pick myself up a little something as a treat to me. The Chosen Item was a muffin pan. A six muffin, aluminized steel, crowned muffin pan, to be exact.

It is a thing of beauty.
That night, I christened it with a batch of Betty Crocker's Pumpkin Muffin's. I put cream cheese in half of the muffins, after hearing my friend talk about the deliciousness that it cream cheese filled muffins. The verdict?

The muffins are beautiful, but nothing special. I blame the recipe. It called for 'Pumpkin Pie Spice', which I reluctantly used. I felt that using nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, and some ginger in their individual incarnations would be a wiser idea. I should have followed my intuition. I was told the muffins tasted of pepper.

Pepper? I like pepper just fine, I'm rather fond of it, but in muffins? That is incorrect.

Lesson Learned: Screw 'Pumpkin Pie Spice'.