Apple Muffins and Cook's Illustrated

Today I made muffins in the freakin' awesome new pan that Ross and Kelly got me for my birthday. It makes square muffins!! How cool is that?
Anyway, I started thinking about how to take advantage of the fun squared sides of the pan, and I thought that it would be perfect for lining with something and then putting the batter in the middle. That way when it cooks, whatever I had lined the pan with would be the outside layer of my muffin.
Really good idea, although the execution still needs some work. I decided to line the edges with apple slices and then I made an Apple Cinnamon Muffin batter to go in the middle. I am still looking for a really good muffin batter, because the ones that I always seem to find are either WAY TOO dense, or much too sweet for my taste. I think this one would have been a little better with brown sugar as opposed to white because the molasses gives it a little bit of a savory background. Also, next time I think I would go with green apples, not red. The green would have added a little bit of tart acidity to cut some of the sweet.

In other news, for my birthday I also got a subscription to Cook's Illustrated from Ryan and Amy. Today the first edition came!! It is a really fun magazine. They explain the science behind what I do, which is awesome because I like to know why it works, not just that it does. And they test different products and give their reviews as to why or why not they would recommend them. This, for me is an awesome feature. Like in this one they tested different brands of Cinnamon, and there is nothing worse than buying the crappy one and then being stuck with this HUGE bottle of sucky cinnamon.


So I hope everyone enjoyed my first actual cooking post, and as soon as I find a muffin recipe that I like, I will be sure to post it. I also have another recipe that I am in the middle of perfecting for that pan, and once I work out the kinks, you will be the first to know....

xoxoxoxo