Zucchini Muffins.

Was starting to feel like it's time to go off 'baking mix' and make muffins with good old flour and baking soda and salt. Anyway we ran out of baking mix. It's no big deal. I bought a package of unbleached all-purpose at Trader Joe's over the weekend (the one in the light blue packaging). Picked up a thing of baking soda. A thing of vanilla extract. Why don't they carry nutmeg? That was odd. What if I wanted to make a lasagna? Oh well. Omitted nutmeg and followed this decent and easy to execute recipe.

My suggestion to you is to print this recipe out at your office and bring that paper home. I didn't think of that and looked at my smartphone every two minutes. Imagine reading a recipe in 3x4 inch grid. That was a pain. And I swear it doesn't say in the directions, when to incorporate the salt, but obviously I put it in with the dry ingredients. Had I read the directions more carefully, I'd have filled each cup closer to the top and would have had those nice domes pictured on the Simply Recipes site. Oh well.

Equipment change. Last time with the banana nut muffins recipe, the batter was quite liquidy and I had a hell of a time filling cups. I'd forgotten that during my last baking phase I'd purchased a variety of scoops. I was delighted when I learned of different scoop sizes. I used a smallish one this time to distribute batter. This helps a lot in getting them to consistent size.

Anything else worth noting? Bought 2 packages of very nice cupcake liners. The ones shown here are from the "jewel toned" set. I stuck to the greenish color to complement the zucchini. Oh, and this recipe calls for 3 cups of shredded zuke, I used 3 small/medium vegetables and that worked out nicely. This is a lot of vegetable so the zucchini flavor is intense if you're into that sort of thing.

Next time maybe a different banana nut recipe or some chocolate chip cookies. Need to run to the store for more eggs. Question for readers: How picky are you about eggs [for baking or otherwise]? I've been known to shell out (no pun intended) for good-quality eggs. My mom thinks I'm a fool for doing so.