Of Muffins and Modern Helpers

If you've been reading my blog for very long, you know I'm a fan of soup and bread or muffins for dinner.  But I'm also a fan of muffins for breakfast.  A few simple ingredients and some time in the oven yields a simple pleasure that's timeless.  Really, I'm certain if jaded pallets, those who are the diners in four star restaurants, could just taste a simple muffin with butter and jam, they'd throw away their American Express cards and stay home and bake. 

But on to my title.  About fourteen years ago Dan and I were shopping in a nearby town and went into a little specialty store and found a stoneware muffin pan in the shape of a heart that made heart-shaped muffins.  We bought it and discovered that something about the deep wells of the pan created an even more delectable muffin.  Using a recipe that normally yielded ten regular muffins, we got six extra-yummy muffins in the stoneware.  We were hooked, and even bought two more to give to Matt and Amy and Ann and Eric. 

There was only one problem.  No matter how we labored over greasing the inside of the heart-shaped wells, it was extremely difficult to remove the muffins from the pan.  At least one ended up in several pieces.  The joy of the muffins was definitely dulled.  Amy and I still used ours, but Ann finally gave up.  Fast forward to last year and an email conversation CJ (of Created by CJ) and I had led to her telling me to try a Pam-type spray that included flour to get bundt cakes out in one piece.  I'm a little slow at times, but it finally occurred to me that the same spray could be the answer to my muffin problem--and it was.

We had heart-shaped muffins for breakfast this morning.  All it took was a slip of a table knife down the side and each muffin popped right out. 

No sticking bits left in the pan,

Perfect muffins in the basket.

With a little butter and strawberry jam, heaven!