Recipes are suggestions.

Friends, I have to level with you.

We are friends, right?

I hate recipes. Yeah, I said it. They are so limiting. What if I don't have a stick of butter? I can't have muffins then?? What if I really love lemon? Garlic?? Am I really supposed to just measure those things out without giving them a sniff to decide when it's enough?

VANILLA??

Garbage. Hear me out: RECIPES ARE SUGGESTIONS. You are the boss. Make it the way you want it.

For example: I wanted some orange flavored breakfast items. I googled and found a SUGGESTION for these cranberry-orange muffins from a site I have gotten lots of SUGGESTIONS from before. Never being one to say no to the combo of orange and cranberry, I dug around in my freezer for the cranberries I stashed there last winter and got to work.

The recipe is probably delicious as suggested, but I wanted it to be more filling, so I subbed half the flour for quick-cooking rolled oats. It seemed like the amount of sugar was a little high, so I cut that in half, and subbed coconut sugar, because I had it, and I didn't want to use all of my cranberry stash, so I used half of what was suggested.

See?

They are delicious. Turned out, though, the sugar really did need to be a little higher to balance the tart cranberries, so I whipped up a little glaze to drizzle over the top to give it a little more sweetness. Perfection.

Here is the recipe for the glaze:

1/4 cup powdered sugar

1T maple syrup

2 drops Madagascar Vanilla oil

2 drops Wild Orange oil

Mix that with a fork or tiny wisk, then slowly add enough water to make it a drizzle-appropriate texture. I doubt I used more than a teaspoon.

Next tip? Keep track of the changes you make in case you want to make the same thing again. Trust me here. 😉

Do you do this with recipes? Please tell me I'm not alone.