Cinnamon Stout Glazed Muffins

A headache can really kill your day. This headache started during cheer practice (yeah, try having a headache, but asking 15 kids to "be louder"), and continued until I could lay down and take a semi-nap. I wanted to go to the grocery store after practice to make some dinner tonight, but my headache won that battle. For dinner I had an egg sandwich on a bagel and a slice of frozen pizza later on. I guess I'll cook tomorrow night.

I was however, feeling better later on and decided to bake. I feel really let down when I plan on being in the kitchen and don't cook. I have also learned certain staples to keep on hand in my kitchen so I can bake a lot of things without needing to go to the store. Most of these are things you will tend to have a lot of over time, so you don't have to restock as much:

Flour (I go through a lot of it)
Granulated sugar (also go through a lot)
Light brown sugar
Powdered sugar (I go through A LOT, especially with cupcakes)
Baking powder
Baking soda
Cinnamon
Pure vanilla extract (or vanilla bean paste, or vanilla beans)
Eggs
Milk (this one is iffy, we don't drink a lot of milk, so it sometimes goes bad before we use it all)
Chocolate Chips
Baking chocolate (semi-sweet, bittersweet, and white)
Cocoa Powder
Butters (salted and unsalted, I go through a lot of these as well)
Applesauce (not always needed, but lasts a while and comes in handy)

Most of the time, you can make a lot of dessert with just these ingredients. Sometimes you need a few extra things. I have all sorts of baking things, like all sorts of "chips" (chocolate, white chocolate, peanut butter, butterscotch, caramel, Andes mint, etc), sprinkles, caramels, caramel sauce, graham crackers (for crusts!), cream, extracts (raspberry, lemon, almond, red velvet, mint, peppermint, etc).

So basically, I'm pretty stocked. I had two bottles of stout left from my Shepherd's pie last week, so I looked into my Pinterest and low and behold I had a recipe for some Guinness muffins. Well my stout isn't Guinness, it's Narwhal, so I renamed the recipe and added a glaze to it. The glaze is just my own recipe, replacing milk in a regular glaze with stout. Other than the stout (which you could use another liquid for), you just need flour, white and brown sugar, salt, baking powder, eggs, milk, applesauce, and cinnamon.

There was a pretty decent stout flavor from these. The stout I used was a little more bitter than I would have liked. When I bake with stout, I usually a sweeter stout, like gingerbread, chocolate or milk stout. If you want your muffins a little sweeter, add in some vanilla extract. These were a bit blander.

Cinnamon Stout Glazed Muffins
muffins from Confabulation in the Kitchen

1.5 cups flour
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 tsp.salt
2 tsp. baking powder
1 large egg
1/4 cup plain applesauce (I just used a whole single serving cup)
1/4 cup milk
2 tsp. vegetable oil
1/2 cup stout
1 tsp. cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 375. Line a muffin tin with 12 liners or spray with cooking spray.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugars, salt, and baking powder.
3. Add the egg, applesauce, milk and oil and stir until just combined.
4. Add the stout and cinnamon and stir until combined.
5. Divide evenly into muffin tin and bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

If you want to glaze them:

1 and 1/4 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup stout

Whisk the sugar and stout together until combined and there are no lumps. Dip each cooled muffin into the glaze, let sit a few minutes, then dip one more time.