This video has been very kindly sponsored by Squarespace. Hello friends! Hi! I hope y'all are doing well. Happy... whenever it is when you're watching this. So! Today I did a little bit of tidying this morning, because I was sat at my desk working on some new sticker sheets, and I was just looking around my desk and I was like "Boy, oh boy. This is a mess, ain't it?" And so I just had to take a second to like tidy up our living room for a spell. My tea was steeping anyway, so it worked out. And yeah, so I was working on some new sticker stuff. My shop is currently closed and so I'm taking some time to basically like... I'm taking this time, just like, since I can't have so ZoĂŠ come through to help me pack orders I'm taking this time to restock on some stuff. My creativity has been just kind of non-existent in the past like two, three weeks. So I'm-I'm-I can kind of feel my mojo coming back though. So, I'm hoping that I can take, I'm gonna be reopening my shop at the end of April. Washington State has our, like, shelter-in-place order in effect until May 4th. And so I'm probably going to open up my shop like at the end of April, very beginning of May. um, and I'm hoping that I canâI don't think I'll have any new stickers, but I'm hoping that I can make some paintings, or embroider some hoops. I had a very lucrative business meeting with Connor where I essentially just sort of realized that with the amount of work that I need to do this week I can structure it so that I can work like two or three days a week and then spend the rest of the week having like fun creative playtime, which I think will be very good for me so that I don't just spend every single waking moment playing Animal Crossing, like I've been doing. So [chuckle] I do have to say though that the past like, the past two days, I've been a little more... distanced from it because I follow a lot of Animal Crossing Twitter accounts and some people's islands are so beautiful! It's very intimidating! Um, and kind of makes me feel very self-conscious about my island and my town which kind of goes against the whole point of Animal Crossing, so I'm trying to spend less time looking at beautiful islands on Twitter and just like relishing in the joy of the game because that's what it's all about. So, I did just move my house though. I like, I like, built a little cliff out and I moved my house up next to a waterfall so I'm kind of like up in the woods now, I think it's quite cute. Okay, but! I digress. That's not why we're here. [laugh] we're here because I wanted to make, um, some lemon poppyseed muffins! I've been baking a lot. Last week I made... so I've been making this It's from King Arthur Flour, it's called like "back of the bag oatmeal bread" And I was very lucky in that I had a.. before all this stuff happened, I had a full bag of bread flour sitting in my pantry that was unopened, and so I was able to crack that open and I've been making this bread like once or twice a week and it's sandwich bread, super delicious, lovely, but I'm about to run out of bread flour. But I was actually able to find all purpose flour yesterday at the grocery store for the first time in three weeks and so I was able to replenish my stock. Now I'mâ I was in danger of running out, but now I'm no longer in danger of running out of flour, of all purpose. So, now I can make muffins and not be scared that I'm wasting flour that I could be using on bread! [fun classical music] Our loaf rose a bunch. Can you come and get some good footage on the loaf? So it rose a bunch and now it looks really good. So I just brushed the top with some egg white mixed with cold water. And now sprinklin' on some oats for a nice little finish, and then into the oven this goes for about, uh.. 35 minutes, so It goes into a 350 oven but, uh, our oven runsâ This can't be a flattering angle. Our oven runs a little bit cold. So I have to set it at 370, but let's do it for.. I think it's 35? 36? We'll do like...33. Bread!! (ta-da) That's all. [whisper] Bread. Excellent. [fun classical music] But yes. Okay. I need to tone it down, I feel like I'm like real hype. Gotta take a breath. [giggle] I think it's all the.. I haven't had that much tea. But I did have some digestive biscuits earlier, so I'm uh.. Think I'm just, I'm just all amped on sugar and tea and things. Um, but anyway, so we are making just some bog standard lemon poppyseed muffins. Super... I don't know. They're muffins. But I will read off the ingredients to you now, because, I don't know, I can pretend that I am like.. Can I just pretend that I'm like a cool baking channel? Sure. So, for this recipe, you will need three cups of all-purpose flour, one cup of granulated sugar I use, like, organic cane sugar because I'm THAT kind of person. Two tablespoons of poppy seeds, or however much you have left in your jar if you're running low. One tablespoon of baking powder (it's a lot of baking powder, it is a full tablespoon), 1/2 a teaspoon of baking soda, 1/2 a teaspoon of salt, half a cup of plain yogurt (I meant to say a cup and a half) 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, 1 1/2 tablespoons of lemon zest, 2 large eggs and 8 tablespoons of butter, melted and cooled. The great thing about muffins is that they're pretty simple when it comes to makin'. You just mix, you mix your wet ingredients, you mix your dry ingredients. You fold the wet very gently into the dry, And then with this one, you keep the butter off to the side And you melt, let that cool, and then once you've got your wet and your dry ingredients together then you fold in the butter at the very end. I don't know why. I'm not gonna pretend like I do. And then also.. so it didn't say this in this recipe onlineâ I will also have this recipe linked below! When I want to bake something, I pretty much just Google it and I just find the recipe that has like the most and best reviews, or if it's from a baking blog that I've visited a lot in the past, and that I trust. So when it comes to bread things, I just go to King Arthur Flour, because pretty much like I trust them completely. If I'm at a loss for where to find a recipe, if I go to King Arthur Flour, I know it's gonna be good. I've never been disappointed with any of the recipes that I've used from that website. They also have an incredible thing called the Baker's Hotline, which I think is such a delightful invention, where you can just call or message them basically, like any time of day during the workweek, with any of your baking questions, and they'll just get, get back to ya. So if you have questions about like flour, or substitutions, or anything they're [deep sigh] They're so knowledgable and incredible. Just love King Arthur Flour. I love what they're doing. But!! So, it didn't say so in this recipe, but for apparently, a common thing to do with muffin batter is to actually let it rest, so it's not like.. It's not like, you know, a bread, like a yeasted dough. You don't need to let it proof or anything, but they say that you should let it rest for like an hour? That's what it says online, to like let the flour.. hydrate. Also sorry, this lighting is a bit... Is that better? Yes, um.. So, they say that you should let it rest for like an hour online to let the gluten relax and let the flour hydrate which I think helps with the rise in the muffin?? It also makes the batter like more kind of a viscous consistency. Again, I'm talking like I'm pretending to know what I'm on about. I don't. Let's getâI'm just, I'm gonna get my mise-en-place set up, and then we can mix! Okay! Soooo, I took the liberty of whisking our dry ingredients together. Also, normally, when I bake now I've gotten into the habit of using grams instead of cup measurements, just because they're way more accurate, obviously. But if you are using cup measurements when you're, when you're measuring your dry ingredients, in particular flour, make sure that you are spooning the flour into the cup, as opposed to using the cup measurement to scoop it out of your flour bag or container because if you do that, it's very likely that your flour will be compacted, and you will not have like a true 3 cups of flour. You might even end up with like three and a quarter, three and a half. So if you are using cup measurements make sure you're spooning your flour, shaking it out to like fluff it up, and then level it off with your finger or the back of a knife. But that's why, IMO, [weight] measurements are the way to go, but a lot of American recipes don't come with weight measurements, which is a shame. But anyway! So I whisked together all of our dry ingredients. I've got our flour, sugar, poppy seeds, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in this bowl, and then.. Now I am mixing together our wet ingredients, which is our plain yogurt, our eggs which I already kind of whisked a bit to kind of break them up, so they'd be easier to incorporate, and our lemon juice and lemon zest. it ends up being like, pretty much the juice of one lemon if you really get in there, I use one of these little guys to just like get all the juice out And, I would say like, a lemon... and a half of zest? I also just really like it when things are very lemony, so if you go overboard on the zest, I'm not not going to tell anyone. So, uh, kay. Now I'm going to mix together our wet ingredients. So, I am throwing in our lemon juice and lemon zest, n' our eeeeeggs [CLANG] We're going to whisk these together to mix them. [whisking sounds] So, normally when you are mixing your... Pretty much in baking, normally, like if you're baking a cake and you're not dealing with muffin batter which needs to rest, you want to have your muffin tin or cupcake tin or cake pans or whatever prepped and ready to go. You want to have your oven preheated. because once...I kind of forget what happens, like, specifically? I remember Claire Saffitz talking about this but basically once your wet and your dry ingredients meet, they start to react and kind of activate and you sort of.. After you incorporate them together, you don't want to let, normally you don't wanna let that mixture sit too long and you kind of want to get it into your pans and into the oven so that you can like get the best results. Again, I don't know the science behind this but I do know that's what you should normally do. But since we're making muffins, we're gonna let 'em, we're going to let this batter sit for a spell after we mix everything together. Let me see if I can... it's tricky to film in my kitchen though just because this window is so bright, I wonder if I could bring this down just a little bit to try and cut.. Yes, I feel like if I actually want to start making like I don't know more legit cooking videos, I'm probably gonna need to like find a table that I can roll out in the middle of our kitchen just because our only light source is from this way, and it's obviously this is my counter space so it's tricky to film, but regardless! I have a spatula here, which you wanna use to fold. And so now..actuallyâis my butter cool? My hands are clean. You just don't want it, um.. As far as I know you don't want it piping hot, you just don't want it to cook your eggs, basically. Some recipes you do want you know, your eggs to like cook, like if you're making a meringue you want to like cook your egg whites as it's whipping to make them all like beautiful and glossy, but most of the time you don't want your eggs to be cooked in your batter before you bake it. [sings] SooOOOoo Okay, let's pour our yogurt mixture in to our flour mixture. Already smells lovely and lemony. And then when you're folding basically what you're doingâagain, it's hard for me to show you with the lighting in this kitchenâ but basically what you're doing is that you're just kind of going around the outside bringing it through and you are truly just folding your wet ingredients into your dry ingredients. You want to make sure that you're not over mixing. You want to keepâ this is essentially a gentler way of incorporating your ingredients so that your cupcakes don't lose... Structure? height? Again, I talk like I know what I'm talking about, but in actuality, I really don't. But I do know that when it comes to muffins, cupcakes, cakes, anything like that, It is very important that you do not over mix your batter. because then, what basically happens is that you develop the gluten in the flour too much, and it will cause your cupcakes and cakes and things to turn out very tough and chewy, and not like the light fluffy crumb that you want when you're making something sweet and delicious. This is already actually a very thick batter? I don't know if we're... I'm gonna let it rest anyway, because that's what I had planned for, so. You want to make sure that you're also picking up from the bottom of your batter mixture, that way you're not getting.. So that way you're making sure that you're getting all of your dry spots. Because usually they will hang out at the bottom of the bowl. Now I don't have a lot of experience making muffins. I'm much more of a cupcake gal, but um, Okay, that looks good. So now.. Oh? [gasp] Hello? [bigger gasp] Hi Mr. Bumblebee!!! Hello!!! Okay, he just came by for a quick visit. Now he's gone again. So now we're going to take our butter, pour it in. I think this will helpâThe batter is super thick right now. So I imagine that this extra liquid will help loosen it up a fair bit. This is for a recipe for like bakery style lemon poppy seed muffins, so I don't know what incorporating the butter in at the end, instead of with the rest of your wet ingredients, does to the mixture, but [shrug] Whatever. I trust this blog, so! I'm just gonna let this sit at room temperature, basically until my oven is preheated, and I can grease my muffin tins so, um. Please hold! [chime sound] While my oven is preheating, I would like to take this moment to say thank you so much to Squarespace for sponsoring this video! Y'all are swell! I use Squarespace to run my online shop. It is currently closed, but will be open again soon. And I love using them. They're a great platform. They're super easy. Loads of beautiful templates to choose from. Whatever kind of website you want to make, they got you covered. They have incredible 24/7 customer support. You can customize the templates super easily. You don't need to know anything about code. I have an e-commerce plan on Squarespace, and it makes it very easy to run my online store and collect analytics and data and things like that. Soâoh, Mr. Bumblebee's back. Hi! Hello little friend! If, uh, you've been thinking of making a website ,openin' up an online shop, anything like that, you can head to squarespace.com for a free trial and then, when you're ready to launch, You can go to squarespace.com/cheyennebarton for 10% off your first purchase. Or you can use the code CHEYENNEBARTON at checkout. Whichever, whicever suits your fancy. So, cheers Squarespace. I appreciate you. It's always so satisfying when you make a perfect cup of tea. When like you don't have tooâ when like the sugar to milk ratio is just right. Because (strange chuckle) So! I talked about this on Instragram, but I went on this like online British corner shop and I bought myself a bunch of tea, because I ran out of my Yorkshire Gold. I'm trying not to buy from Amazon at the moment, and so, I was trying to find other places online that I could buy it from, and I found this like online little like British corner store, and so I got myself The Yorkshire Gold. I also got this like Yorkshire Tea Biscuit Brew?? I posted about it on my Instagram stories and loads of British folks have come through saying that it is very good, so I'm excited to try it. And then I also got some decaf PG Tips because a lot of the times, I love the flavor of like tea with milk and sugar But if I do drink it past like, six, it keeps me up. I try to pretend that the caffeine doesn't affect me, but it most certainly does. so I got the decaf, so that way I can drink tea [in an English accent] late at night and not have my sleep disturbed. It's very nice. [Normal voice] I also read the backs of the box and I'm actually gonna âhang on. Give me one second. [The CRASH of a box falling to the floor] Oh my god. The back of the biscuit, of the Biscuit Brew box in particular, is.. very British, and so I read it in a British accent on my Instagram stories and people said that I sounded quite posh and it's because, As an actor, going to acting school, [chuckle] Iâ you study RP, received pronunciation, and so that's like what I'm best at, and usually if you're auditioning for a show where you have to do a British accent they're asking for like RP. Because, y'know, if you're auditioning for like Oscar Wilde or Pride and Prejudice or something like that They want you to have just like, standard English accent. But I want to read this for you now because it brings me such joy, um.. And..yep. [giggle] [in an English accent] "A proper biscuit brew. Here's a miraculous tea that tastes like biscuits. Because when those two flavors combine, the resulting deliciousness creates a wave of happiness big enough to power an entire human being. It's a magical mug of biscuity goodness that doesn't get crumbs on your jumper." Crumbs!! On your jumper!! I can't believe that there are people in the world that say things like this. It's incredible. [normal accent] I love it. So I'm very excited to try this tea, and these are the things that are bringing me joy. Tea and muffins, lots of baking. As I was saying, I'm getting my [oven beeps] oh! I'm gonna get to you in a second. As I was saying, I'm getting my like drawing, creative, mojo back. I've been really out of it the past two weeks, but as I settle back into like, a work routine again, I feel like my creativity is coming back to me. And so I'm very excited to make stuff this weekend. I really do want to make Animal Crossing fan art. I'm very scared of making fan art. Like, very scared of making fan art. Because, um, I love the things I love so dearly, and I want to do them justice, and I feel likeâlike, for instance: Persona 5. One of my favorite video games of all time I'm so scared to make fan art of it because I feel like my style isn't dynamic or cool enough to capture the coolness of those characters. And so I'm scared of that, and so I'm just like, "Well, Animal Crossing fan art will be easy, because Animal Crossing is cute as can be, my art style is very cute. Surely that'll be an easy, like, leap!" And yet!! I'm still so scared just cuz I wanna... Fan art is like the one time where.. Fan art and like, other things of course, But I would say fan art is like, the most prominent thing in my art where I get very self-conscious about doing it "right". So maybe I'll try and work on, these next couple weeks, to let go of that. I have a 12 by 12 canvas that Connor bought me like two years ago now? And I haven't painted on it because I've been so scared about it. But maybe I'll paint on it this weekend, and I'll paint just some lovely, wholesome, Animal Crossing things. I also want to start embroidering again. I've been, I've been making sure to like keep consuming a lot of art, and so I can feel my inspirations coming back to me and I can feel.. sort of my creativity is returning to me once again. Elizabeth Gilbert talks a lot about how inspiration and ideas are like, living things that come.. that, like, sort of come visit you when they're ready. And so you need to be ready, and I feel like I haven't been prepared or ready to receive ideas and inspiration. And so every time they've kind of, come a-knockin, they're just like, "Okay, I'm gonna, I'll come back later, I guess, because it's clear that you're not ready for whatever this is gonna be, so I'll talkâI'll hit you up later." And I feel like now I'm finally ready that if they come a-knockin I'll be like "What's up? I just sat down at my desk. Please come join me. Let's, uh... make something." So that's very exciting. But for now, I'm gonna scoop some muffin batter. So excited!! I love lemon poppy seed muffins! Lemon poppy seedâ Lemon, really. Lemon in anything. (whisper) I love lemon. Lemon as a flavor is just like *mwah* I wanna lemon icebox cookies, too. I digress! So now, we're just gonna be dividing the batter. I shouldn't have let it sit in the sun, maybe. That's okay. So now we're just gonna beâso now we're just going to be letting, we're gonna be dividing the batter between our 12 muffin tins. If you are a baker in any kind of like even semi-serious capacity like, say you bake a lot of muffins or cupcakes, I highly recommend getting yourself an ice cream scoop. This is aâtrying to get it where you can actually see itâ There you go. This is a size 24, and it essentially measures the perfect amount to go in each thing, so. However...this seems like way more batter then is gonna fit in these guys. So... The recipe said to "divide it amongst the twelve" and normally you don't want to let things like come up more than... How on earth... is this supposed to be 12 muffins? Was I supposed to use like an extra-large tin or something? Wha-what did I miss? Because, this easily makes two dozen muffins. Easily! Maybe I'll just make two dozen muffins. Okay, well. Yeah, this absolutely makes two dozen. I don't know what this, what this writer is on about. Oh my gosh, look how much better I have left! Okay, I'm gonna try to put a little bit more in some of these.. Again, I don't want 'em to... So it's kind of like a scoop and a half, I guess? Or like a scoop and a quarter, even? I feel like that, I feel like the person I got this recipe from is using like extra large muffin tins or something cause clearly I was...I don't know what I was doing. Okay, I'm just gonna make another dozen, I guess. That's fine! I don't think anyone's ever complained about having too many baked goods. That's not true. I have. Because it's just Connor and me. Sophie can't eat all the things I bake, and now with quarantine, It's harder for me to get my baked goods to friends. Maybe there are folks in the neighborhood that would benefit from these. [sigh] Okay! I used to work in a bakery where we would make basically, like, giant cupcakes, and so there is a chance that, um the person who wrote that, wrote this recipe was using one of those cupcake tins, because those are basically twice the size of these. And I feel like looking at the final pictures of the muffins on their blog I was like, these look huge. And they are "bakery style" so yeah, the more I think about and the more I talk through it, it is very likely.. that um, they were dealing with like extra large extra-large tins. Oh my god. I'm so excited to [sings] lick the boooowl! Best part of baking, imo. There's also a um, like, like, lemon syrup glaze? Like, lemon simple syrup glaze that goes on this but frankly, I can't be bothered to create a simple syrup, so, I'm not going to. Okay! Into the oven these go! Well, while I wait for these to bake, that's all I have for you today! I hope that you enjoyed baking with me. I would love to make more like, baking videos, it's just that my kitchen isn't very well designed for filming them. I don't know. Maybe I'll need to figure out a solution. Thank you again to Squarespace for sponsoring this video. I want to say thank you so much to my patrons! You guys are so lovely and I just love you to bits! And, um, thanks for your patience and your generosity. I think y'all are so swell. Thank you so much for watching this video I promise that I'm going to show you footage of the final product when they're done baking, but I'm very warm in this sweater. I'm very warm after standing in the sun now for like an hour. So I'm gonna go change into a t-shirt, and get to work editing this video and doing some other things! Probably playing Animal Crossing. Most likely playing Animal Crossing. Okay. I love you so much. I will talk to you soon. Stay well and... Stay brilliant. Bye!!! <3 [simple piano music] About to die, but are you recording? Connor: Mm-hmm.
Chey: Oh, yeah, the muffins are very good! Maybe I should have put the glaze on but I'm still too lazy to do so. [giggle] Tea time! That was a great shot. [mumbling] I'm gonna try one. Chey: Wait, my camera's about to die, babe. Connor: Then you'll never know. Chey: Wait! Oh wait! No, it's good. It's not about to die. It was before. Okay, go! Try one. Connor: Is this is for me?
Chey: Mm-hmm! Connor: Is my hair wonky from nap?
Chey: Your hair is perfect from nap. Connor: Mmmmmm.
Chey: Mm-hmm. Chey: Could be lemony-er. Connor: They're so good. I think it's... Lemon poppyseed's always subtle.
Chey: I like it when it's really lemony. So butâ
Connor: Delicious!
Chey: âgood to know for next time! Chey: Anything toâany last words for the vloggo?
Connor: I just woke up.
Chey: Okay. Chey: Great. I love you.
Connor: I love you. I woke up to this! Chey: I know, what a dream!
Connor: The best. [me singing Bubblegum K.K. to myself as I've been doing almost nonstop for the past three weeks]
