Raisin Gingerbread Muffins

I've been baking and cooking up a storm lately!

Last night, for example, I made Raisin Gingerbread Muffins, thinking that they were a little more neatly portable than the boy bait was.

Recipe with my modifications follows.

Raisin Gingerbread Muffins

Take your butter out of the fridge, and let it soften.

Preheat your oven to 375°F

If you forgot to soften your butter, pour yourself a lovely beverage and sip it while you wait for your butter to soften.

Cream together:
1/2 cup butter (which is softened, right?)
1/2 cup sugar

Beat in:
2 eggs, 1 at a time

Beat in:
1/2 cup sour cream

Beat in:
1/2 cup blackstrap molasses, which has more nutrients in it than other molasses, so this gets the mystical allure of being a Healthy Muffin

In a separate bowl, mix together:
2 cups plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour, divided
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 generous pinch salt

Add dry ingredient mixture to wet mixture, and stir to combine. Just to combine -- once everything's gotten damp, stop stirring.

Stir in:
1/2 cup golden raisins

Line your muffin tins with, well, muffin tin liners/cupcake wrappers; you're making 12 muffins, so line enough indentations. Distribute dough evenly between the cups. They'll be about 3/4 full, but don't worry too much about it, as long as they are evenly full. Grab a tin by the short sides, lift a few inches off your work space, and thunk it back down on your workspace to help settle the dough in nicely -- it's sticky, so if you try to even 'em out from above, be prepared to lose some dough.

Pop the tins in the oven. Check in on them in 18 minutes: if you can slide a toothpick or broomstraw into one and have it come out clean, you have muffins! Otherwise, rotate your trays in the oven, and give 'em another 3 minutes.

Remove from oven to wire rack. After 5 or 10 minutes, tip them out of the tin to finish cooling on the rack.

Once they're all-the-way cooled, you can pop 'em in a zip top bag -- a gallon size works nicely, if you eat two of the muffins first. (What? They smell good.) Close the zip top almost all the way; you don't want it completely air tight. Store on the counter or in your breadbox if you're going to eat them all in the next few days, otherwise fridge 'em or freeze 'em.

These taste VERY GOOD. They'd be even better with cream cheese frosting.