Last week I shared a recipe for mini-brownies that use leftover Halloween candy.  I was really excited to make this recipe and test it out for this blog.  I had all my food ingredients, everything was going along great when I noticed—darn—I didn’t have any mini-muffin liners.  Bummer.  It was one of those days when running to the store was not going to fit into the schedule and mini-muffin liners aren’t one of those items you can call your neighbor to borrow (“Hi neighbor, do you happen to have some mini-muffin liners?”).

That’s when I started brainstorming and came up with this simple solution for replacing muffin liners that saved me from having to either waste the brownie batter or make a really inconvenient trip to the grocery store.

I realized that I had plenty of foil in the drawer, so I started to think things through and that’s when I reached for a pair of craft scissors and started cutting.

I cut out squares and rectangles about 1 inch larger in side than the top of the muffin tin holder.

I gently pressed the foil into the tins, making sure that there was full coverage of the holder.

Then I poured the batter into the tins, baked the mini-brownies and (hooray!) realized that the foil worked beautifully as a stand-in for muffin liners.  

In fact, next time I want to give a gift of muffins or cupcakes, I think I will use this technique, “fancy-up” the edges with the craft scissors and make the baked treats look even more special than just a traditional muffin liner.

I love tricks like this...necessity is the mother of invention!

Life is sweet,
SPC