Nothing New

We haven't done much lately but more staining. I stained Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and V stained Saturday. Unfortunately, on Saturday it rained in the middle of the day before the stain had plenty of time to dry. This wasn't just a little spring storm, it was a torrential downpour! So, quite a bit of the area V stained was stripped so we have to go back over it tomorrow. But I think we might actually finish tomorrow! Or at least close enough that we could do the final bit one night after work.

Our neighbors just had a new baby. We don't really know them well but they seem friendly enough and I wanted to do something to let them know that even if we don't really talk to them it doesn't mean we are creepy people. I got a little basket at Target and little hippo rattle. At the time I didn't know whether they had a boy or a girl so I wanted to get them something gender neutral. It is surprisingly and annoyingly hard to find baby toys that aren't very clearly for either a boy or a girl. I was kind of shocked. I always hear people talk about how hard it is to try and give kids gender neutral toys when they are little but this was crazy. Everything is either pink or blue or says something about boy or girl. And once you get past that, everything is a brand! Either Disney or Dora or Handy Manny or whatever is popular now.

Anyway, in the basket I put brownies and snickerdoodle muffins. I found the recipe on Culinary Concoctions by Peabody's blog. She has lots of classics. These were really tasty. I'm not a big snickerdoodle person but V ate one and said it was tasty. The sugar on the outside got nice and crispy and yummy. I made them in mini-muffin tins instead of full-sized like Peabody did.

Snickerdoodle Muffins

2 sticks unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
¾ tsp baking soda
¾ tsp baking powder
¾ tsp cream of tarter
¾ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1 and ¼ cup sour cream
2 and ¼ cups all purpose flour

1 cup sugar and 2 TBSP cinnamon mixed together for rolling

1. Preheat oven to 350. Cream the butter and sugar. Add in the vanilla. Add in the eggs one at a time

2.In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, ground nutmeg cream of tarter.
3.Add the flour mixture and the sour cream alternately to the wet mixture in the additions. Start with the flour and end with the flour.
4. Scoop out muffin batter one at a time and drop into bowl filled with the cinnamon sugar mixture. Roll the muffin around in the mixture until it is covered completely in cinnamon sugar. Place muffin into a greased muffin tin. If using mini-muffin tins bake for about 13-14 minutes. Let cool completely. Use a paring knife to loosen from the tin before removing.