Chocolate Malt-O-Meal Muffins

Well hey there, friends!

It has been a hot minute (or 2.5 million minutes) since I was last here.  The last 4+ years have been incredibly busy, rewarding, stressful, and jam-packed with life.  We have completed educational pursuits, endured health crises, progressed at work, made small improvements to the house, taken trips, fostered relationships, and come through on the other side.

During the craziness of life, I continued to create recipes for a while, some of which I will slowly be adding here, but over time, my work and life responsibilities fully took over my life and made it hard to find time to enjoy not only creating recipes but cooking and baking in general - I was always so mentally worn out after everything was said and done that a lot of my hobbies got put on the shelf and I didn't engage in any of them for YEARS.

A couple weeks ago, however, I took some time off work and was able to spend some time reconnecting with who I am, the things I love, and was able to dust off those hobbies and begin to feel like a human again!  It was so refreshing to feel like I had time and energy to do the things I loved once more - that 5-day "vacation" from work was exactly what I needed to recenter.  Little did I know that the universe had ideas of its own.

The very week following my 5-day sabbatical, myself and 200+ of the people at my company who were at the same employment grade were all requested to attend a meeting where we were all summarily laid off.  Just like that, 13+ years of employment with my organization were done.  And I couldn't help but laugh.

Yes, I laughed, and not to minimize the seriousness of the situation, because it was definitely shocking and very serious, but I had just spent the previous few days recentering and feeling like a human again and now, I literally had all the time in the world ahead of me to connect with who I am, what I want to do, and charge ahead.

The last few weeks have been full of home improvement projects, cleaning, organizing, job searching (of course), crafting, and naturally, a little baking thrown in there.  I am truly excited to spend more time thoroughly enjoying my own company and figuring out my next steps.

If you, like me, still don't make sufficient time for breakfast though, even if you do have time on your hands, these Chocolate Malt-O-Meal Muffins are the thing for you.  Similar to my Cream of Wheat Muffins, these beauties are richer and pack a different kind of punch due to the malt within Malt-O-Meal.

Chocolate Malt-O-Meal Muffins

Ingredients:

1 c. Chocolate flavored Malt-O-Meal cereal (uncooked)

1 c. flour

1/2 c. sugar (I use less than a 1/2 cup since I like my muffins less sweet and the cereal already has some sweetness to it, but if you like your muffins on the sweet side, this is the measurement for you) 

3/4 c. milk

1/4 c. oil

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1 Tbs baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 - 3/4 tsp cinnamon

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Whisk together the dry ingredients in a medium bowl.  Stir in the milk, oil, egg and vanilla and mix until smooth.  Pour batter into a greased or paper lined muffin tin, about 3/4 full.

Bake for 13-15 minutes, or until golden.  Allow to cool slightly before removing from tin.

Enjoy!