The Muffin Boycott

Today I made muffins. I suppose I wanted to honor the solar eclipse with something new; or maybe, I just wanted to use up my blueberries.

Most of you probably make muffins frequently. Not me. If they do not come from the bakery or in a simple (add water and bake) package, I don’t make them.

It is not that I don’t like to bake. Actually, baking is fun for me. I’ll never win the Great British Baking Show (or even the Hidden Valley Bake-off), but I have success with my mother’s terrific recipes. Her Christmas crescents are still everyone’s favorite. My friends love my lemon squares, and I invented a new oatmeal cookie that is a specialty of the house.

My muffin-baking boycott is the result of my 7th grade home economics class. Back in the late 1950s, girls took home ec in the 7th grade. The boys were in shop class. They enjoyed making key racks, screwdrivers, and toy boats. We were stuck in the kitchen and sewing rooms.

There were four of us to a team in the kitchen. We had our own sink, oven, and cabinets. On muffin day, we were assigned “surprise” muffins. I can’t remember what the surprise was supposed to be. Ours were more than a surprise. They were a natural disaster.

Our muffins just did not turn out.

We had about a half hour left of class, so we decided to start over. Not knowing what we did wrong, we made them exactly the same way. Of course, they were no different than the originals. We called them the “rubber muffins.” Years later, in high school, we still joked about those muffins. Even at our 50th reunion, someone called out, “Remember the rubber muffins!”

The worse part of the entire charade was clean-up. Since we had spent our “eating and tidy-up time” re-baking muffins, we did not have time to wash anything. What to do? Keep in mind that we were four 12 year-olds. We wiped the gooey stuff out of the bowls with paper towels. We hid the dirty pans and bowls in our cabinet and went off to math class.

One girl said she would sneak back in the Home Ec Lab at lunchtime and clean up. I did not think that would work—our teacher was a stickler for lab security. Another girl warned her friends in the next class and asked them to use the same pans.

We never did find out what happened to those dirty pans, spoons, and measuring cups. When we returned to home ec the next time, nothing was dirty. Nothing was out of place. Our teacher never admonished us or said a word about it. She did mention, however, that the “surprise” muffins were “indeed, a surprise.”

When report cards came out, we noticed that the home ec grade lowered our grade-point averages.

The next year, we had a choice between home ec or art. We signed on for the art class.

We still had to clean up, but nothing came out rubbery.

So how about today’s muffins? Well, despite the fact that my baking powder expired in 2016, they were delicious. I ate three.