It’s a disease I like to call CCMM. It’s kinda like the potato chip disease where you can’t eat just one. The little bite size buggars are just too easy to pop in your mouth. . . one right after the other.

But I have to tell you . . .I had the hardest dang time making them. Not because the recipe was difficult or anything. Quite the contrary actually. It’s just that menopause has stolen parts of my brain and won’t give it back.

I digress a bit with the following story, but you’ll see my point by the end. In the fifth grade, my teacher gave us a test with a couple of paragraphs of written instructions. She said specifically, “Make sure to follow the instructions as they’re written!!” I very briefly scanned the instructions, then went about answering all the questions on the test. I mean, gosh, it was a TEST. That’s what you do.

We ALL failed.

I bet you can guess why. Cuz you’re smarter than a fifth grader. The instructions had a lot of verbage, but at the end of the paragraph, it said to only answer the very last question on the test.

If I had read the dang instructions, I and all my little classmates, would have saved ourselves a big fat test.

The point of this story is that apparently I STILL can’t follow instructions. Either that or I’m so used to cooking stuff where I know the ingredients like the back of my hand that I think I know what I’m doing. THIS fact is not true. Let me tell you. This recipe, I don’t make all that often, so it required me to actually READ the dang ingredients as a reminder.

I set about making these things Sunday night. I set out all of my ingredients and took a few photos (I’m still trying to find the best settings), then set about making them. I measured. I stirred. I mixed. I filled the little muffin tins. I sprinkled them with sugar. Then I popped them in the oven. Easy breezy. Then I set to cleaning up. “What?! What’s THIS? Brown sugar?! Dammit!!!!” I hadn’t put the brown sugar into the dry ingredients. How in the world did I not put the brown sugar in? It was sitting right in front of me as a reminder. If it was a snake, it would’ve bitten me.

So with the muffins half cooked, I just let them cook on. I was curious at this point what they’d taste like.

Yep – they were gross! So trust me when I tell you NOT to forget the brown sugar. Otherwise, I’m just sayin’.

And just so you know. . . setting everything out like this right in front of me didn’t help me a bit. Despite my fubar, this is what you’ll need.

Chocolate Chip Mini Muffins

1/4 cup cocoa
1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 cup mini chocolate chips
2 eggs
1 cup milk
2 tsp vanilla
2 tsp vinegar
1 stick butter, melted

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. In a large mixing bowl, stir together the cocoa, flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and mini chocolate chips.
In another mixing bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, vanilla and vinegar. Pour the egg mixture into the dry ingredients. Then add the melted butter and stir to blend until just well-combined. Do not overmix.
Spoon batter into greased and floured (I use the spray stuff) mini muffin cups. Sprinkle with granulated sugar. Bake muffins for 15 – 20 minutes. Make sure not to overbake.

This is what they look like with or without the brown sugar.

The story doesn’t even really end there. Last night, I made them AGAIN. This time, it was when I pulled them out of the oven that I noticed that they LOOKED different. . . . “Dammit! I forgot to sprinkle them with sugar! What IS wrong with me?” **don’t answer that** So, I improvised and just sprinkled them with powdered sugar. It wasn’t quite the same, but they were still tasty nonetheless.

Has anybody seen my brain?