Puffins, anyone?

To redeem myself from a baking disaster Friday night, I decided to make the Mini Pancake Muffins I found..."Puffins" :) I don't have a mini muffin pan so mine weren't mini but they were delicious! I cracked an egg into the bowl and look what I found...

twins! I'm not kidding...that's only one egg. Crazy, huh?

Maple Pancake Muffins
adapted from Bakerella

• 1 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 Tb. sugar
• 2/3 cup buttermilk*
• 1 egg
• 2 Tb. maple syrup
• 2 Tb. melted butter
• chocolate, optional

*To make 1 cup of buttermilk, put 1 Tb. lemon juice in the bottom of a measuring cup and fill with milk to the 1 cup mark. For 2/3, use 2/3 Tb. lemon juice and fill to 2/3 cup and so on.

Preheat oven to 350 F and generously grease your muffin pan. I employed Alton Brown's muffin method while making these because...well, because AB is always right. :) Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar in a bowl and "sift" with a wire whisk. Basically, combine with a whisk and let the flour mixture fall through the wire whisk to create finer particles. (Using the word particles in a recipe definitely comes from watching too many episodes of Good Eats.) In another bowl, stir buttermilk, egg, maple syrup and melted butter until just combined.

Nice action shot, eh? :) Always add wet ingredients on top of dry ingredients to prevent mixing messes.

Stir with a wooden spoon or spatula until just combined. AB uses 10 well-rounded strokes until everything is incorporated and then just walk away. Leave the lumps...they will work themselves out.

See, now I'm quoting the Muffin Man episode. It's pathetic, really. Oh well. Divide the batter into the muffin cups. I used 1/4 cup measuring cup to ladle it in there and somehow only got 11 instead of 12...hmm.

I topped a few of mine with chocolate chips, but you can leave them out or mix them in right before ladeling. You could get creative, any manner of toppings would work...but chocolate is always a winner in my book. I baked my muffins for 12-13 minutes and she baked her mini muffins for 8-9 minutes. Just keep a close eye on them and use a toothpick to check. Serve with maple syrup for dipping.

These were seriously good. Definitely will be repeated. I'm not sure if I would put the chocolate chips in the actual batter because mine sunk to the middle anyways and I don't think I could handle more chips than this...