Mini-muffins for School Bake Sale

My daughter H had to bring baked goodies to school. She is a member of the student council, and they'd raise funds thru the bake sale. In the past, I've seen some parents send store-bought packaged cookies. I'm so tempted to do just that!

But H prefers to do it "honorably", the old-fashioned way -- bake the goodies ourselves. I admired her willingness to sacrifice time and effort to do this. I must admit I prefer to just laze at home this weekend. My better self argued this is another opportunity for some bonding time, and reinforce those positive values.

So, what do we have in stock? A pack of Betty Crocker dark chocolate cake mix. The rest of the ingredients are stuff we readily have in the pantry - water, eggs and vegetable oil. Great!

With her brother D helping out, we got the batter prepared in no time (following the box directions). I mixed in a few tablespoons of Van Houten pure soluble cocoa, and mini-chocolate chips for extra chocolate goodness. (I always think most kids are like me -- can't resist chocolates and almost everything else that has it). We will just make mini-muffins - quicker to bake, and no extra preparation needed to have smaller pieces ready for selling.

I helped her put the batter into the baking pans -- a test of patience for me because she was doing it soo slowly, trying to make it perfect, even stopping a couple of times to take phone calls from a friend.  Not easy to raise a teen,  but H is, in my biased view, a model teen :)

At 180 degrees C, the small muffins only took 10 minutes to bake. After cooling them, H packed the goodies and put them in the fridge. I reserved a few pieces for myself, of course.

see the mini choco-chips?