Froot Loop Muffins

I was in a baking mood last night, so I scrounged around in the kitchen to take stock of my raw materials. We were out of applesauce, which meant Applesauce Coffeecake was out. We had plenty of canned pears, but I didn't think that a Pear Coffeecake would be so hot; we only had one can of peaches, which wasn't going to be enough for anything I had in mind... So what did we have plenty of? Cereal.

Less than 5 minutes on Google hooked me up with recipes for Corn Flake muffins, Lucky Charms treats (cousins to Rice Crispy treats), and Froot Loop muffins. "Froot Loop muffins," I thought. "That could be interesting." They turned out to be only somewhat sweet--not nearly as sweet as I expected them to be, being made of breakfast cereal--since most of the sweetening came from the apple juice I used to soften the 'Loops.

I made three variants:
Regular muffin size
Mini muffin size
Regular muffin size w/ cherry pie filling

The last variant turned out to be rather...messy; however, my kids loved them. I brought a bag of the two non-messy variants in to work and they were well-received.

Froot Loop Muffins

Adapted from http://www.mrbreakfast.com/superdisplay.asp?recipeid=2204

Prep
Prepare 12 muffin cups with cooking spray or muffin papers. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Ingredients
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 cup Froot Loops cereal
1 1/2 cup apple juice
1 large egg
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/4 cup Froot Loops cereal, crushed coarsely

Directions
In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.

In a separate medium bowl, mix the cereal and juice and mixing occasionally until the cereal softens (at least 3 minutes). Add egg whites and the oil and mix until well combined.

Add the cereal mixture to the flour mixture and fold together until combined--don't overmix or you'll have tough muffins.

Dollop batter into prepared muffin cups so they are about 2/3 to 3/4 full. (If desired, you could add 1 tablespoon of batter to the cup, followed by 2-3 tablespoons of fruit pie filling, and fill the rest of the cup 2/3 to 3/4 full with batter.)

Bake 15 to 20 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean. If batter sticks to the toothpick, give it another few minutes.