Everybody deserves chocolate

January 16, 2010

I just realized that the virtual oven has been quiet this week, as the real oven has been in overdrive. Lots of baking has been going on, and most of it wasn’t quick bread or muffin related, so will have to wait for another month. In the midst of it all, however, I took an evening to make three dozen Chocolate Breakfast Muffins from one of my favorite recipe sources, mail order catalogs, and retail stores – King Arthur Flour. These muffins are incredible. Little handfuls of amazingly chocolately goodness, so compelling that you want to open up the oven and lick the piping-hot batter while they bake, because you can’t possibly wait another minute to taste them. Seriously, they’re THAT good.

What was the occasion? Good question. In November I added myself to a distribution list of bakers at my workplace. The company sponsors and serves dinner twice a month at a local homeless shelter. They’ve got the menu down pat, and have a dedicated group of volunteers who do the shopping, cooking, and serving. The baking list was created to provide desserts for this meal. Not every baker contributes every month, but with the enormous list we’ve got, we’re guaranteed to always have enough after-dinner treats for the 150 or so people served. We can bring whatever we want – it’s a wide assortment from cookies to cakes to brownies to fresh fruit, and a mix of homemade and store-bought. My personal goal is to always try to make something comforting. Not so much with the experimental flavors, trendy ingredients, or designer desserts. Also, I try to make my contribution at least as good, if not better than I would want to share with family and friends. I guess I feel that if you’re down on your luck, isn’t that when you’d most appreciate a little bit of baked chocolate love in the palm of your hand, something that says ‘home’?

Posted in Quick Breads & Muffins | Tagged chocolate, muffin, shelter |

One comment

What a great cause–I’m sure there are lots of people that might even want to skip dinner and go straight to dessert! It’s great to give back–keep up the good work!
by Alissa January 17, 2010 at 8:57 am

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about loveysoven

I’m a hobbyist baker who gets rave reviews on my output – “you should do more with your baking! you have skills!” – so here I am, blogging as I experiment. We’ll see if more than 3 people read along. One reason for this project is to encourage me to bake more. Currently I’ll go through phases where I don’t bake for weeks on end, followed immediately by a weekend where I just MUST bake at least 700 things. I’m hoping this will even it out a bit. Due to a touch of (undiagnosed, unmedicated, but oh-so-there) ADD, I am sometimes paralyzed with all the different choices of what to make next. To that end, I’m going to attempt a different category each month, to help direct my efforts. Of course random things might still pop up, but I’ll try to keep to the month’s theme as much as possible. As time progresses I’ll be working on developing more of my own recipes, but to start it will mostly be one of the zillion recipes in my ‘to try’ file. Anything used that isn’t my own will be appropriately recognized. Anyway, thanks for popping in, hope you enjoy. If you see any glaring mistakes or stupidity, please feel free to (gently) let me know.

loveysoven