Upside-Down Caramel-Apple Muffins Revisited

In all fairness to the New York Times recipe people, I gave their Upside-Down Caramel-Apple muffins another chance. It is, after all a new day, and miracles can often happen overnight. Flavors can mingle, textures can change, and moisture can be sucked out of the atmosphere to create a truly tender and flavorful muffin. So I cut one in half and tasted it. Eh. So-so. It does have flavor. Some flavor. Pleasant flavor, I suppose, but my main issue, I think, is with the rather dry and crumbly, esophagus-jamming texture. The other half I warmed in the microwave. I think (but am not positively sure) that the warmed version was better. But the fact of the matter is, I am still not comfortable eating something that has me mentally running through the steps on how to perform a self-inflicted Heimlich maneuver, so thumbs are still down on this one. The caramelized apples, however, are very good and would make an excellent ice cream topping, so my efforts were not all wasted.



My gut instinct is to just chuck these into the bin, but my husband (who has been known to save a half dozen corn niblets at the conclusion of a meal) has instilled in me some sort of food disposal guilt and while I’m not the obsessive saver that he is, I imagine these will take up space on the counter for the next couple of days or, more likely, end up in what I like to call Food Purgatory – the downstairs freezer where all things go and are never seen in the same way again. Which makes me wonder why it is that some people (yes, my husband again) can’t toss something initially, but can let it morph into some freezer burned petrifaction and then get rid of it. Something to ponder.