Two at a Time Baking

The strawberries from the farmers market yesterday were screaming out to be baked into a treat and I also wanted to do something nice for my in-laws this weekend as a thank you for helping us out a lot this month.  So I decided to surprise them with some freshly baked Strawberry Streusel Muffins (using this recipe).  I decided to make 12 regular-sized muffins instead of the large ones I made last time. Even though my blog post from the first time I made them specifically mentioned that I used Baker's Joy, for some reason I thought it would be better to grease the tins with butter (warning sign #1).  As I was mixing it up, the batter seemed a bit wetter than it was last time (warning sign #2) even before I put in the super sweet, super juicy strawberries in.  Undeterred by those pesky warnings, I plodded forward.

I had a little leftover batter which I put into mini muffin tins.  I took the mini muffins out of the oven after about 10 minutes, let them sit for a few minutes and they popped right out of the tins (and were pretty darn tasty).  I let the rest of the muffins cook for about 20 minutes. They didn't seem to be dark enough but I obsessed about the fact that it seemed like they should be in the oven for less time than when I made the extra large sized muffins last time (warning sign #3). So I dutifully tested them with a toothpick, which came out clean and so out they came from the oven. After letting them sit for about 5 minutes in the tin, I turned them over onto a wire rack.  When I lifted the pan, nothing happened. Nothing.  Not a single muffin came out (warning signs #4-16).  I figured they just needed a little help leaving the nest so I banged them lightly onto the wire rack.  The result was quite disappointing and I must say rather ugly:

I tend to get pretty frustrated when something I've spent time on in the kitchen doesn't turn out well. Erik encouraged me to try to keep track of what went wrong and make the most of it. As I sat there deciding whether I wanted to start all over, buy some muffins at the store or go back to bed and pull the covers over my head, I thought about the fact that, of all the people in my life, my in-laws would be genuinely thrilled to have some freshly baked muffins no matter how ugly or messy they were.  So, Erik helped me pack them up in a basket with some fresh strawberries as garnish.  I certainly wouldn't enter them into a contest or anything but I was quite pleased with the result:

On the drive over to my in-laws, I talked to Erik about the fact that I wanted to blog about my little mis-hap and he coined the perfect phrase for it: Bakewreck.  Somewhat in the vein of Cake Wrecks and reminiscent of a recent post on one of my favorite Baking Blogs (Cream Puffs in Venice), Bakewrecks will be my attempt to learn from and share my mistakes with others.  I love the new phrase - and I'm sure I will have many opportunities to use it in the future!