Payday Pumpkin Muffins and "Smidgening": A Retrospective

This weekend, we ushered in Fall with the first autumnal confections of the season...PUMPKIN MUFFINS!  With PAYDAY candy bars crushed up inside!  Divine?  You betcha.  Photos and recipe are below.

It should be noted, however, that pumpkin muffins are a very risky baked good for those prone to chronic "Smidgening".  They were definitely my gateway smidgen.  Oh sorry, you're unfamiliar with smidgening?

SMIDGEN (V):  To eat a baked good one tiny morsel at a time so as not to give the impression that you ate the whole enormous item all in one sitting, despite the fact that you eventually ate it all anyway.
ex. She smidgened the hell out of that brownie, cutting it into quarters and eating one every 30 minutes so as to diminish her shame for eating the entire confection.

From the Diary of Liz: Whenever my mom would make pumpkin bread, the urge to smidgen became simply too great.  Pumpkin bread is easier to smidgen than muffins because you can shave off bits of the loaf undetectably.  I would typically smidgen in 30 minute intervals until I had eaten at LEAST one whole thick slice.  Smidgening is a behavior that is typically inherited; Several of my family members, most notably my father, are guilty of the exact same thing.  "Sure I'll have a cookie!"  He'll break off a small bit of it.  Hours later, three cookies are missing.  Just eat the whole cookie.  You're gonna do it anyway.

So, dear readers, when you make these muffins, promise us one thing:  You will consume yours in one sitting, with a tall glass of milk.  You will not shame yourself into smidgening!  Do we have your word?  Excellent, then let's begin!

Payday Pumpkin Muffins

Ever think how great pumpkin muffins would taste with melted caramel and nuts inside it?  Good, so did we!  Get your hammers ready to crush up some frozen caramel, 'cause heeeeere weee gooo!

 

First thing's first, freeze those payday bars as soon as you buy them.  You'll want them hard as rocks when you crush them to pieces later!

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Beat together sugar, oil, eggs, pumpkin, and water.  It will look a little something like this wonderful orange soup:

Mmm...like swimming in Fall!

Then, combine the flour, baking powder and baking soda, spices, and salt.  Your kitchen might start to smell a little like Thanksgiving and the magic of Autumn.  By all means go with it.

After you've absorbed all the cinnamon fumes you can, rescue those Payday bars from the freezer.  Unwrap and put them in a ziplock bag.  Get a hammer or mallet or any other heavy object and start to crush those unruly rocks of caramel!  Once they're crushed into 1/4 inch or less chunks, take 3/4 of them and fold them into the batter.  Then add the walnuts. 

  

Once your pumpkin batter is full of caramely-nutty goodness, divide into a muffin tray.  This should yield about 2 dozen small-ish muffins, maybe 1.5 big fat ones.  Mine were obviously of the big fat variety.  Sprinkle the remaining crushed up Payday on top of the muffins.

We're ready to fulfill your wildest dreams!

Bake them for 15 minutes for the small variety, 18-20 minutes for the larger variety.  I needed about 18 minutes for mine but they were pretty big!  

Take them out, let them cool....and then...

A big happy family!

 

 

 

 

Pour yourself a tall glass o' milk, sit down, and start living the dream.  The sweet, sweet dream of melted caramel in your pumpkin muffins.  Remember, NO SMIDGENING PERMITTED! 

 

Love,

Liz

PS -  All New England dwellers (from where I hail...) go play in the leaves on my behalf please?  And visit an actual pumpkin patch that is not a deserted parking lot full of imported pumpkins? Happy Fall!

The Great Pumpkin is coming!

...or at least his smooshed up, fully baked, underachieving younger brother will be.  It's pumpkin bread season, guys! 

Before we talk about THAT, let's start by saying THANK YOU!  Yeah, you!  Thanks for reading/following/re-posting this past week!

You:  Oh you're so welcome!  All I did this week was stare at pictures of that worm cake and salivate.  How can I taste some next time?

Us:  Volunteer to photograph and taste test!  Comment and we'll rope you in! 

You:  Sweet, I'll be doing that!  Also, sometimes I get lonely and I want feel the warmth of your delicious musings on a more regular basis.  How could we make that happen?

Us:  By following us on Twitter, duh!  @FatKidKitchen.  Go.  Do it now.  We're watching you...

Good, now that you've done that, let's talk about PUMPKINS!
 

Thanks for the overalls, Mom.

 So basically Liz has been waiting for the Great Pumpkin like Linus ever since this photo was taken.  And in his honor each year, she goes to town on every single pumpkin baked good she possibly can between mid-September and the day after Thanksgiving.  So it's only fitting that she'll be bringing us her special Fat Kid Kitchen twist on PUMPKIN MUFFINS next week!  What's the secret ingredient?  Well jeez we're not gonna tell you YET!  Just wait!

Please do continue to spread the word of Fat Kid Kitchen like oozy warm nutella on...well pretty much everything (like ya do).  And check back in a few days for the top secret pumpkin muffins recipe!  Thanks guys!

Oh Hi There! + Subterranean Worms n' Dirt Cake

Well hello internet!  Britt and Liz here.  Welcome to the debut of the Fat Kid Kitchen!  Listen, let's just get this out of the way.  We are here to celebrate Fat Kid Culture. 

You: Oh man guys, isn't that kind of mean?
Us: Heck no! Dude, we said 'celebrate!'
You: Are YOU guys fat kids?
Us: Nah, we're all grown up. But we sorely miss our fatty childhood indulgences. And let's be real, we're not the only ones! You know how you sometimes plunge a spoon into a container of chocolate frosting at 2am? And how every now and then you have this uncontrollable need to spread peanut butter on EVERYTHING? And that one time you put ice cream on your pancakes and your boyfriend told you that was "Such a fat kid thing to do"?
You: Oh yeah. I totally do that. Daily.

See? THAT, my friend, is what we're celebrating! Part recipe blog, part childhood-nostalgia-contact-high, this will become your safe haven for all your beloved Fat Kid tendencies. So go ahead, stick that spoon in that frosting. You know you want to.

For our first kitchen creation, we figured we'd start with a treat every kid loves: Chocolate Cake! But our childish imaginations ran wild and the recipe quickly transformed into...

Subterranean Worms n' Dirt Cake

Just in time for Halloween parties next month, we present to you a slightly sophisticated twist on the old pudding cup classic.  You know the one.  That party-in-your-mouth parfait of chocolate jell-o, gummy worms, and crushed up oreos.  But we thought...you know what'd make that even better?  If the worms were UNDERGROUND.  And the "ground" consisted of two extra-rich, indulgent flourless chocolate cakes.  And so it began...our first official Fat Kid Kitchen culinary adventure!

First, you'll want to make your mousse.  Combine your 5 min. mousse mix with the cold milk, whip till it's thick.  Then throw that bad boy in the fridge to chill for the next hour.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Then, spray two circular cake pans with non-stick cooking spray.  The smaller the pan, the better, we found.  You don't want the cakes getting too thin or else they'll crack and get all earthquakey when you try to layer them!

Next, place your chocolate chips and two sticks butter into a medium saucepan over medium-low heat.  Stir it often until it melts into a gooey delicious soup.

Cocoa powder warpaint optional but highly encouraged.

 Transfer the melted chocolate and butter to a large bowl.  Add sugar and mix well.  Make a happy face like Liz's above and get psyched, you're making the best cake ever!

Eggs n' teamwork!

Add eggs one at a time, whisk together.  Then combine your cocoa powder and stir until just blended.  Equally divide the batter into the two greased cake pans.  Set a timer for 35-40 minutes and put those guys in the oven!

Do not anger Britt the ferocious crusher.

While your cakes are in the oven, prepare the filling! Crush 2/3 of your oreos into small shards and set aside.  Then crush the remaining oreos into a fine powder, sans creme filling.  As for the worms, cut up half of them into smaller pieces so your cake is easier to slice.  The longer ones can poke out of the cake like they're trying to escape!

Take your cakes out of the oven and let them cool for about 15-20 minutes.  Then VERY CAREFULLY transfer the bottom cake onto your serving plate.  Seriously, be careful!  These things can crack if they're on the thin side.  But if they do crack, don't fret.  You've got chocolate mousse putty on hand and it's easy to fix.  That's what we did!

Combine the chocolate mousse and oreo shards, then spread across the bottom cake.  Plant your worm pieces (these worms won't grow back after you cut 'em in half!).  Leave the longer ones on the edges, dangling out of the cake.

Ultimate concentration...

Then, very gently move the top half of the cake onto the wormy-moussey-layer.  Teamwork is recommended at this point if you haven't been utilizing it already.  For the cake topping, we drizzled some hot fudge sauce and sprinkled the finely powdered oreo on top.  And the result?

We happened to be having a bunch of people over to watch the Emmy awards that night.  So we took this cake to the next level of TV themery and created a graveyard for all the dearly departed True Blood characters of this past season.  Like so:

Thanks so much for visiting the Kitchen, guys!  We knew you would be coming so we baked you a cake.  A giant goopy cake bursting at the seams with gummy worms and oreo cookies, to be precise.

Love,

Britt and Liz

P to the S:  Special thanks to Emmy Yu for taking the photos and being our first official taste tester!  She's just the bees knees, she is.  Info forthcoming on how YOU can be a taste tester in the near future!