Round Tres! TIE BREAKER

Current Mood: Motivated
Listening To: The Cab- La La 
Current Day: STILL HUMP DAY!

Soooooo friends and family...the...final...verdict...

Alivia-1, Martin-2 :(

It's true!! There are really just some people out there that are good at EVERYTHING. Seriously. Although, I'm sort of happy that I'm NOT good at everything. That leaves room for improvement! And I am excited to grow into the baking world. I'm learning so much and as 2012 comes to an end, I am happy to say that my baking blog has treated me well since May. I can't believe it's already been underway for seven months. Craziness!

So anyways, Martin=good at everything. As a co-worker once asked, "Martin, is there anything you're NOT good at!?" I can't think of a damn thing now! HE'S NEVER BAKED IN HIS LIFE! What is that crap? Just kidding...

I'm done venting, I'm not sour at all! Just means I'll have a future employee :)

Round 1 of the bake off=cranberry orange scones
Round 2=pecan pie
Round 3=a cinnamon muffin with another "special" ingredient. Mine happened to be sweet potatoes and his was white chocolate chips/a streusel type topping with oats in it and a glaze.

Fact=everyone in our office is addicted to extremely sweet things *places this in the back of my mind*

I'm completely crazy and FORGOT to take pictures of our final round! Boooooo well go here for my recipe and you will see that they are sort of like mini donuts! I made mine in regular sized cupcake pans and it made about 18.

What I did differently: I boiled a whole sweet potato, mashed it with my hand blender (it says puree, but I don't have my food processor yet!), and added the whole potato to the milk/vanilla mixture which was more than 1/2 cup. I was a little upset that you couldn't really TASTE the sweet potato in the finished product. Although, I have to say that the mashed potato made the muffin EXTREMELY moist which everyone loves.

These moist-cinna-sugar-pop-in-your-mouth muffins were addicting.

Martin chose this recipe. His were more of a coffee cake consistency with a swirly center and streusel-like-crumbly-oat mixture on top. He used large muffin pans and made six.

I have to tell ya, seriously, they were BOTH very good. I think it was hard for people at work to vote because they were pretty different. It just came down to what you like better. Do you like the chewy oat topping and white chocolate surprise? Or do you like moist, donut-like mini muffins covered in cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar deliciousness?

I ended up losing 7-5 this time around. That means I won only the pecan pie challenge...which was well deserved...sorry had to add that in there :) and he won the cranberry orange scone battle and the cinnamon surprise throw down.

All good future employee!

Cheers!

Random Fact of the Day: Brown sugar is made from granulated sugar and molasses. Even though it's cheap enough in the stores to buy, could be a fun project that can be made in bulk.

That. Is. All.