Another muffin f**k-up

So I’m sitting here trying to read about free will, and instead I am willed to the kitchen (why get a brand new one if you don’t spend every minute in it??). I want to bake, but what? If I had a bunch of girlfriends I’d invite them over for what the Danes called julehygge – Christmas “cosiness” – and we’d drink champagne and make a big mess producing too many little goodies that no one wants to eat. Alas, no girlfriends on call. So it had to be muffins, those other little goodies that no one wants to eat (I myself only want to eat the ones at UCT, and apparently other people only want to eat the monstrously huge ones that parade under the name “muffins” in coffee shops). Perfect. (As the incompatibilist philosophers say, I couldn’t have done otherwise because I have no free will.)

So some evil chain of antecedent events, combined with some freakish laws of nature, compelled me to bake muffins yet again, and face failure, yet again.

I just ate one, and in fact they taste very good indeed (especially with a little piece of goat’s milk pecorino to cut the raisin-bran sweetness), but the fact that they don’t have the requisite muffin tops means they are consigned never to meet human beings in their original form again. It simply can’t be otherwise (I have a reputation to protect). I’ll throw them in the freezer, and one day when I need to feed some bubbly girlfriends (or some such), I’ll whip them out, slice them, toast them, and adorn them with a little slice of strong cheese and a glass of sherry.

Or if I’m feeling more destructive, I’ll tear them up and throw them right into the ice-cream machine while it’s busy churning some rich vanilla concoction. Add a generous splash of brandy (rum? whisky?), and f**ked-up muffins become gourmet dessert. I love my ice-cream machine. It’s so deterministic.

In the meantime, here’s the lovely dolphin that is no longer (courtesy of Tammy, its baker, and mommy of one of its destroyers. I’ve ordered a Prince cake from her for my next birthday):