favorite thing friday

While we are on the subject of banana muffins ... for as long as I can remember, I have genuinely enjoyed baking with our children.

What? Delusional? Who ME?

And except for those occasions when the recipe only calls for two eggs - and I have three highly willing and able egg crackers - I'm convinced that the children have genuinely enjoyed baking with me.

Sure, it took a little time for me to get past the excessive use of ingredients and slight mess that is inevitably triggered whenever you invite young children in to your "work zone" but I have quickly realized that little kids love to help participate in the cooking process.

And the more you allow your children to help participate, the better they get at helping participating. Or, perhaps the more numb you become to the disaster that is created.

Regardless of the case, we do a lot of baking at our house and at least once a week we will whip up a batch of blueberry, banana or corn muffins.

A few years ago, I realized that whenever I would make up a batch of standard-sized muffins, we always had a lot of waste because the kids could never consume an entire muffin. Yet, everyone always wanted their own muffin and apparently, it is a cardinal sin against humanity to cut a muffin in half.

While out shopping one day, I stumbled upon some mini muffin trays and immediately realized that these miniature sized muffin tins were the perfect solution to my excess-muffin-that-I-would-always-wind-up-eating dilemma. Since the muffins were at least half the size of a standard muffin, they were the perfect size for small children. I would no longer have half eaten muffins laying around that I would feel obligated to eat. So not only was I managing our muffin resources better, I had found a simple cure to my rapidly expanding muffin-top!

We have two of these pans, which hold 24 mini muffins, each. Of course it depends on how large (or small) you make your muffins, but two pans (or one pan that is washed and reused) will typically works out to approximately one batch of batter.
Although they are marketed as nonstick, I still give them a quick pass with a nonstick spray. I actually have looked for mini muffin liners and had never been able to find any - until today when I spotted some on Amazon and have added them to my store.

Mini muffins. We love them.

Not only are they the perfect size for children, they are just right for adults (particularly those who are in denial about a marathon they are due to run in less than eight weeks), who find it helps to cope when they eat little cupcakes by the hand full.