Muffins for Mixing (mixing sound, that is...)

I mentioned before that I've been blog MIA this semester because of the film I was busy pouring every hour of my life into for 2 months. Well, that's pretty much over now, because its a class involving partnerships, where each partnership makes 2 films during the semester, and takes turns directing. So I directed the first one (ugh!) and am now working on the second one, which my partner is directing. It's still a ton of work and time, but it's much, much less stressful than directing.

The thing about these films is that we want them to be good. And we technically have the means to make them good. We get 1 week for pre-production, 3 weeks to shoot, 1 week to edit picture, and then 2 weeks to edit sound. That's a lot of time spent on one 5 minute film. And of course, we have professional actors who donate their time to us, a bunch of people who help out with the dirty work on set, and our professors and student assistants who are helping us with insane problems every step of the way.

By the time my film was nearly finished, I was so unbelievably grateful to everyone who had helped me along the way, that the least I could do was bake some of them a good breakfast on sound mix day! After our 2 weeks of building sound (we don't record production sound at all, so we have to build the whole soundtrack from scratch), there is one day during which 2 amazing sound mixers work from 8 in the morning to 6 at night, spending 2 hours with each of us, making sure that our sound is basically perfect and finally locking everything in and making us finished for good.

It's a long day, a stressful day, and a relieving day all at once, and my 2 hours happened to be the very first, starting at 8 AM. So naturally I brought breakfast, in the form of these delicious muffins!

Strawberry Lime Muffins

(adapted from this recipe)

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

3 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

2 cups uncooked oats

1 cup sugar

2 cups milk

1 cup butter, melted

2 eggs, beaten

2 tsp vanilla

2 cups sliced fresh strawberries

zest and juice from 3 small limes

1. Preheat oven to 425 F and line muffin tins with paper cups.

2. Combine the flour, baking powder, salt, oats, sugar, and lime zest in a large mixing bowl.

3. Whisk together the milk, butter, eggs, vanilla, and lime juice in a separate mixing bowl.

4. Stir the milk mixture into the flour mixture until just combined.

5. Fold the strawberries into the batter.

6. Fill the prepared muffin cups about 2/3 of the way each.

7. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes or until golden and an inserted toothpick comes out clean. This makes about 24 muffins.

They are hot and delicious right out of the oven, but just as delicious at room temperature the next day! =)