Muffins are an easy fix for breakfast or snack

Cole Deutschendorf
Staff Writer

Money. It’s been around since the beginning of man. Whether it’s in the form of green paper or precious rocks, money is a very important part of our lives. This is especially true as college students.

We are trying to make it through college in order to get a degree, hopefully with as little student debt as possible. But we can’t avoid paying for some things, such as a place to live, clothes, and food. 

We often look for the cheapest food to purchase, whether it’s ramen noodles or canned soup. Occasionally we’ll spring for something really fancy, like oatmeal cream pies or even name-brand bread. But every once in a while it’s nice to spoil yourself, and I think one way to do that is by producing something homemade. 

Muffins, similarly to money, have also been around for a long time, dating back to the 11th century. There are countless kinds of muffins, whether it’s a classic such as blueberry, old fashioned kinds such as sour cream, or muffins that really aren’t muffins, like carrot cake muffins with cream cheese frosting (that’s just a cupcake).

Muffins and I have an interesting relationship, as during the lockdown of 2020, I opened up a bakery of sorts with my friend, selling muffins to friends and family alike in an effort to connect with people we had not seen in a while. We made several different kinds of muffins, such as lemon poppy seed, coffee cake, and wild berry, among others. It was a fun experience in a fairly dark time. One of the muffins that we perfected were Nutella muffins.

The biggest reason I chose to make Nutella muffins for this article was because they are fairly simple, and they are cheap to make, as far as muffins go. In fact, it only costs around 17 cents per muffin made.

I think that there are two keys to making muffins. One, you need to make sure that your measurements are precise. Baking is similar to cooking in a lot of ways, but one way that it is not is measurements. You have to be sure that what you are putting into the muffin mixture is exactly what is called for in the recipe. 

Secondly, when mixing the dry ingredients in with the wet ones, do not overmix. Overmixing will result in your muffins tasting dry, which is something you can’t really correct once done.

I used a recipe off of www.dinnersdishesanddesserts.com, and doubled the recipe. It took me about 20 minutes to prepare, and then another 16 minutes to bake.

The hardest part of making Nutella muffins is the addition of the Nutella at the end of the preparations. The method that I used is the self-named method titled the “twirl and swirl.” This is admittedly a redundant name because twirl and swirl essentially mean the same thing, but I think it fits. What I did was put a dollop of Nutella in the muffin tin and swirled it around into the muffin mixture with a butter knife. It won’t look the prettiest, but it will taste good in the end and that’s what really counts.

Overall, these muffins are both cheap and easy to make, and can provide any college student with a quick snack to eat before classes or after the day is over.

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