Making Pumpkin Muffins--the Hard Way

You know you want some.  Come on over;
The batch makes 3 1/2 dozen!

The following is a revised version of a very late-night email I sent to my long-suffering children, as I waited for the last batch of my latest baking endeavor to come out of the oven.  I only share this story publicly because this, my friend, could happen to YOU.


1. Day 1 - FaceTime with Mo, my Utah granddaughter, who is eating a pumpkin muffin that a neighbor has brought them. The craving hits.
2. Day 2- dig through recipe box, pull out all pumpkin recipes. Fortunately, muffin recipe is there. Attempt to send humorous picture to children about which pumpkin-based
recipe to make first. Due to iOS upgrade glitch, message never sends. The moment is lost. So, apparently, is any hope of making muffins, as I have no canned
pumpkin.
3. Day 3- buy 5 cans of pumpkin on way home from work. After dinner, and
watching some baseball, decision is made to begin muffin batter prep.
3a. - dry ingredients are poured into large mixing bowl. Cloves are last spice to
be added.  Alas, no cloves in cupboard.
3b. Go to ask.com to enquire about substitute spice. Of course, if I'd dug out
all the spices in advance, I would have seen the problem sooner, and just added
equal amounts of pumpkin pie spice, which I DO have, since it contains all of
the required spices. No such luck. Decide to go with allspice. I know Lisa (Mo's mom) would
have made that call without internet assistance, but you know me. I gotta see it in writing.
3c. Allspice added, dry ingredients mixed. Add wet ingredients and mix well. Add
chocolate chips.
3d. Scoop batter into muffin tins. Fill 24 paper muffin liners, then lick my finger.
3e. GAAAAAAAAAAAAG!!!  Tastes terrible!---I grab the recipe card and scan the list of ingredients.  No, no, no, I couldn't have..... Lightning strikes my brain. I didn't add the sugar!
3f. Take large spoon and spend over 10 minutes scraping batter from 24 muffin liners back into large
mixing bowl. It's now almost 9:30; Dad has been in bed almost half an hour, and I had hoped to be joining him about now. Wish I could just give it up as a bad job, but I can't stand the thought of wasting all those ingredients.  And all that time.
3g. Add sugar to batter. Thankfully, it seems to dissolve and mix in quickly. Lick finger again. Tastes MUCH better!
3h. It's now 10:10, and the second batch just went into the oven. For 20 minutes.

They better taste good.

Goodnight all. God bless us, every one.

Mom

Addendum: 2 days later.  I can laugh about it all now.  And yes, it does help that they taste SO good!  My coworkers agree.  The PE teacher keeps coming back in, claiming to be his twin brother, who didn't get a muffin yet.  And, yes, he actually has an identical twin brother, who lives in CO Springs.  Truly the ultimate compliment, wouldn't you say?!  I'll take it.