Muffin Monday-- "Hello, My Name is ______" Muffins recipe

Just realized I can use Helvetica here. Awesome!

Anyhow, we're traveling, visiting Mae's Grammy and Grandpa, so no pictures this time. 

Bit of a muffin fail, too. Somewhat.  I have this basic, utterly plain muffin recipe, to which you add stuff of your choosing to render them yummy. The basic recipe was a success, but my particular variation this time did not exactly open up new vistas of muffiny goodness. I have an idea of what went wrong. I'll go into that below, but here's the fill-in-the-blank muffin recipe:

"Hello, My Name Is _____" Muffins

2 c. flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
2 eggs
1/4 c. melted butter
3/4 c. milk
1/2 tsp salt (optional)

Preheat your oven to 375. In a medium bowl, stir together the flour and baking powder. In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, butter. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, fold in your additional custom ingredients (see below), and bake for 12-15 minutes.

I used 1/2 c. whole wheat flour and 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour. To this, I added: 1 c. oats, 1/3 c. apple butter, 1/4 tsp cinnamon, ginger, and cloves, and 1 diced apple. I stirred the oats and spices into the flour mixture, and the apple butter into the egg/milk mixture. Added the diced apple at the end. The oats were a success, and the apple chunks were nice, but you couldn't really taste the apple butter or spices. The result was a bit bland. More than a bit. Quite. Quite bland. Very, I would go so far as to say. I should have added at least a half teaspoon of the spices, probably more. Plus, this really needs salt. I should have baked Mae's dozen and then folded in some salt to make the remainder adult-friendly. But I didn't, and they taste flat. Salted butter helps, but does not redeem. 

The muffin substrate was good, though, texturally speaking, and I'll definitely be having another go at these. You can stir in cheese, herbs, dried fruit, fresh fruit, use a mixture of flours and grains, etc. etc. Lots of ways to change these up.

Mae thought it was pretty good, even if I was not impressed with my additions. Meanwhile, my quest for perfect apple muffins continues. Stay tuned.