Baked Bads, Take Two (aka, I don't think you're meant to bake with gummi worms)
I've run into a couple YouTube videos since my last attempt, where I found, not surprisingly, I was not the first to attempt this sort of thing. One intrepid soul used real live mealworms in his version. I admire the authenticity and bravery, if not the wisdom. ;)
I also learned there was apparently a recipe that could be found on Equestria Daily, as seen in this video. As everyone seems to be calling these muffins Baked Bads, I will use that name as well. However, since my goal has been an edible version of these muffins, I will call my specific recipe attempts Not-So-Bad Baked Bads.
Some notes on my last attempt and how it changed my plans for my second attempt:
*I ditched the idea of it having a chocolate base (does not go well with lemon juice) and chose a standard muffin base
*I stuck with muffins, didn't try for a cupcake recipe. Although there admittedly are advantages to cupcake frosting (I still may later try a grey-colored frosting with 'hair' and 'worms' poking out), muffins ARE cooler. I'm so sorry for ever doubting that, I don't know what got into me, please forgive me Derpy XD
*I don't know if there was something wrong with the original recipe I used last time, but I'm pretty convinced those cupcakes were undercooked. Maybe my oven wasn't hot enough, maybe I mixed the batter too much, who knows. I ran my oven a bit hotter and was careful not to overmix this time though
Anyway, recipe and notes follow.
Not-So-Bad Baked Bads
Yield ~ 1 dozen muffins
Ingredients:
* 2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1/2 cup white sugar
* 3 teaspoons baking powder
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1/4 cup sour (lemon juice)
* 2/4 cup soda (cola)
* 1/3 cup vegetable oil
* 1 egg
* 1/2 cup potato chips, crushed
* 1/2 cup wheatworms (gummi worms, cut into fourths, or mini gummi worms)
Directions:
1.) Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (205 degrees C). Line muffin tin with baking cups.
2.) Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, potato chips, worms, and salt; mix well. In a different bowl, combine lemon juice, soda, oil and egg; blend well. Add dry ingredients all at once to the wet ingredients; stir just until dry ingredients are moistened (batter will be lumpy.)
3.) Fill cups 2/3 full.
4.) Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean (be careful to poke muffin and not gummi worm). Cool before removing from pan. CAUTION: Gummi worms will be very hot and will take longer to cool than the rest of the muffin.
My Cooking Notes
The new and improved cooking walk-through, now with pictures!
So I got all my dry ingredients together, and then I thought I'd try large gummi worms instead of those mini sour ones I used last time, I would just need to chop them up a bit.
Which is as fun as it sounds. I figured fourths was probably small enough.
The last time I used Ruffles, but they were unpleasantly chewy, so I thought I'd try a different potato chip brand this time to see how it fared.
Throw 'em all in a bowl and mix 'em good.
In this recipe I use even less cola and lemon juice than last time, which makes me sad. But I didn't want to change the dry-to-wet ingredients ratio-- the only other option was to make a bigger batch, and thus feel like you got to use more cola and lemon juice. But I'm doing a small batch because this is experimental, yo.
Mmmm . . . tasty.
Seriously, kids, don't forget to only fill the cups 2/3rds full, there needs to be room for muffin expansion.
One of the videos I mentioned earlier in this blog entry placed one gummi worm on top of each muffin before baking, instead of mixing it into the batter. I thought, oh, cool idea, I'll put a gummi worm on top of some of them. Good idea, right? RIGHT?
. . .
Nooooooooooo. Bad idea. STUPID idea. Daaanag. I knew they'd melt, but to that degree? The melted gummi fused the muffin and muffin paper to the sides of the pan, so I had to pry and chip away with a butter knife to free them-- that's why some are so broken up, because I had to mutilate them to free them. However, the muffins that didn't have a gummi worm on top fared much better. They still stuck a little to the pan, because they had chopped bits of worm inside them, but I could free them without mutilating them too much.
See? Not so bad looking.
As to the taste, they're really not bad at all. The lemon is definitely noteworthy, I can't really taste cola but that's not surprising. The gummi worms, although melted of course, still taste like gummi worm, which compliments the lemon, actually. The melted gummi worm is a somewhat alarming texture, sure, and tends to make the muffins crumble quite easily, because the bits where there's a lot of gummi, the muffin can't stay together. And it looks really weird, a bit like oozing puss. But I think that's why people normally do not bake with gummi candy. ;)
Oh, and once again, the potato chips are so subtle that you can't really notice them in the muffins, but I suspect their taste will always be overpowered by other things. Unless you add like a billion chips. And then the muffins might not cook right if you do that.
All in all, it was a much better attempt than the last one!
EDITED TO ADD: Next day, eating the muffins cold, mannnn. Not as tasty as when warm. XD And those potato chips still have quite an unpleasant chewyness to them.
And I forgot to add, thanks to folks at RainbowDash Forums for some ideas on the muffins.
I also learned there was apparently a recipe that could be found on Equestria Daily, as seen in this video. As everyone seems to be calling these muffins Baked Bads, I will use that name as well. However, since my goal has been an edible version of these muffins, I will call my specific recipe attempts Not-So-Bad Baked Bads.
Some notes on my last attempt and how it changed my plans for my second attempt:
*I ditched the idea of it having a chocolate base (does not go well with lemon juice) and chose a standard muffin base
*I stuck with muffins, didn't try for a cupcake recipe. Although there admittedly are advantages to cupcake frosting (I still may later try a grey-colored frosting with 'hair' and 'worms' poking out), muffins ARE cooler. I'm so sorry for ever doubting that, I don't know what got into me, please forgive me Derpy XD
*I don't know if there was something wrong with the original recipe I used last time, but I'm pretty convinced those cupcakes were undercooked. Maybe my oven wasn't hot enough, maybe I mixed the batter too much, who knows. I ran my oven a bit hotter and was careful not to overmix this time though
Anyway, recipe and notes follow.
Not-So-Bad Baked Bads
Yield ~ 1 dozen muffins
Ingredients:
* 2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1/2 cup white sugar
* 3 teaspoons baking powder
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1/4 cup sour (lemon juice)
* 2/4 cup soda (cola)
* 1/3 cup vegetable oil
* 1 egg
* 1/2 cup potato chips, crushed
* 1/2 cup wheatworms (gummi worms, cut into fourths, or mini gummi worms)
Directions:
1.) Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (205 degrees C). Line muffin tin with baking cups.
2.) Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, potato chips, worms, and salt; mix well. In a different bowl, combine lemon juice, soda, oil and egg; blend well. Add dry ingredients all at once to the wet ingredients; stir just until dry ingredients are moistened (batter will be lumpy.)
3.) Fill cups 2/3 full.
4.) Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean (be careful to poke muffin and not gummi worm). Cool before removing from pan. CAUTION: Gummi worms will be very hot and will take longer to cool than the rest of the muffin.
My Cooking Notes
The new and improved cooking walk-through, now with pictures!
So I got all my dry ingredients together, and then I thought I'd try large gummi worms instead of those mini sour ones I used last time, I would just need to chop them up a bit.
Which is as fun as it sounds. I figured fourths was probably small enough.
The last time I used Ruffles, but they were unpleasantly chewy, so I thought I'd try a different potato chip brand this time to see how it fared.
Throw 'em all in a bowl and mix 'em good.
In this recipe I use even less cola and lemon juice than last time, which makes me sad. But I didn't want to change the dry-to-wet ingredients ratio-- the only other option was to make a bigger batch, and thus feel like you got to use more cola and lemon juice. But I'm doing a small batch because this is experimental, yo.
Mmmm . . . tasty.
Seriously, kids, don't forget to only fill the cups 2/3rds full, there needs to be room for muffin expansion.
One of the videos I mentioned earlier in this blog entry placed one gummi worm on top of each muffin before baking, instead of mixing it into the batter. I thought, oh, cool idea, I'll put a gummi worm on top of some of them. Good idea, right? RIGHT?
. . .
Nooooooooooo. Bad idea. STUPID idea. Daaanag. I knew they'd melt, but to that degree? The melted gummi fused the muffin and muffin paper to the sides of the pan, so I had to pry and chip away with a butter knife to free them-- that's why some are so broken up, because I had to mutilate them to free them. However, the muffins that didn't have a gummi worm on top fared much better. They still stuck a little to the pan, because they had chopped bits of worm inside them, but I could free them without mutilating them too much.
See? Not so bad looking.
As to the taste, they're really not bad at all. The lemon is definitely noteworthy, I can't really taste cola but that's not surprising. The gummi worms, although melted of course, still taste like gummi worm, which compliments the lemon, actually. The melted gummi worm is a somewhat alarming texture, sure, and tends to make the muffins crumble quite easily, because the bits where there's a lot of gummi, the muffin can't stay together. And it looks really weird, a bit like oozing puss. But I think that's why people normally do not bake with gummi candy. ;)
Oh, and once again, the potato chips are so subtle that you can't really notice them in the muffins, but I suspect their taste will always be overpowered by other things. Unless you add like a billion chips. And then the muffins might not cook right if you do that.
All in all, it was a much better attempt than the last one!
EDITED TO ADD: Next day, eating the muffins cold, mannnn. Not as tasty as when warm. XD And those potato chips still have quite an unpleasant chewyness to them.
And I forgot to add, thanks to folks at RainbowDash Forums for some ideas on the muffins.