You didn’t buy it because it looked enticing. Not because of its retro pink-and-gold packaging, and certainly not because of the photos on the box, which make the muffins look like tortilla-chip-sprinkled cups of raw ground beef. You bought it because your oldest kid is about to graduate from high school, and you’re shaky on your feet. You’re lucky you didn’t pull the box off the shelf and collapse into a freezer full of toaster waffles.
New foods at Trader Joe’s always tempt you, but now they’ve caught you at your weakest. You just want to find one treat that could pull your son away from graduation prep, and somehow already picking his dorm room, and (god help us) “beach week,” to spend five minutes talking to you, despite your face turning into Sad Clown every time he talks, while all you see is his baby face looking back at you, now with stubble.
So, you decide to make this mix, though neither you nor Trader Joe seems clear on what you’re making. Is it a dessert? A breakfast food? At the very least, it’s a distraction from Facebook Memories of his last day of kindergarten. You get to work mashing cornflakes and red sanding sugar with melted butter, mixing up eggs, oil, and milk (in your case, unsweetened soy milk, even though it’s right next to the regular milk, because right now, how can you both read directions and follow them?). You pour into the wet ingredients the powdery dry mix, which starts as white, but as you stir, turns alarmingly pink, which would have been fine had you known there were dried strawberries in there, but since you didn’t, you want to weep about more things Changing Too Fast. You pour the batter into cupcake liners, sprinkle the cornflake-sugar on top, and bake away, hoping the aroma might entice him downstairs more than the sight of them, or, really, of you right now, ever could.
As they bake, you find them on the Trader Joe’s site: “Easy to make… we find that the resulting Strawberry & Corn Flake Muffins or Loaf Cake from this Mix are especially great for bringing along to potlucks, pool parties, barbecues—all sorts of summer-y occasions.”
But you already know these muffins don’t—to borrow from your children—have aura. They’re not a natural color; they’d disturb Prue Leith in a Signature Challenge. If you took them to the pool, people might think you were like the women who smuggle vodka in their Hydro Flasks and later do questionable tricks off the diving boards. The lifeguards, your son’s classmates, might confiscate them, thinking they did, in fact, have aura. Or worse, the other parents could shake their heads and say, “Poor thing, her oldest’s graduating, and she’s just at the pool handing out her crunchy meat cups.”
It turns out, though, that once baked, the muffins taste good, like sugary strawberry cereal, and you realize this was the intention, for it to be cereal-flavored cake (not to be confused with cake-flavored cereal, which also exists). But then they called them “muffins,” knowing that “cupcakes” is a stretch. To add to the confusion, it’s cereal-flavored cake, but the cereal used here is unsweetened cornflakes. It’s cereal, also, that has succumbed to death by butter, and by day two will have the “mouthfeel” of syrup-coated sticky notes. By day three, the red sanding sugar will have fully infiltrated the muffins, giving them the appearance of a complex mammalian artery system.
Clearly, these treats won’t get your son to talk with you. Calling up the stairs, “We’re having muffins for dessert!” won’t help, not even adding, “But if they were in loaf form, they’d be cake!”
To be fair, though, there isn’t much you could offer today that might engage him, when anyone can see you’re about to go full Patricia Arquette in Boyhood (“I just thought there would be more!” she cries. Cut to her son driving himself to college). Like the muffins, you are overly sweet, you have a whiff of nostalgia and a look that says, “Well, I tried.” You, too, aren’t sure what you’re supposed to be at this point, especially as the high school teachers, the pediatrician, and the college (except, of course, the financial office) keep telling you, “It’s all up to him now.” You’re a bit superfluous, and also a HIPAA violation. You’re like the pit crew that got him fixed up, and now he’s speeding away to his destiny (you’ve never been to a car race, but oh, did he love Lightning McQueen).
Except now he’s in the kitchen. He’s deftly ignoring the muffins, talking about a movie he just saw. He gives you a hug for no reason, except maybe the scent of strawberries in the air, or maybe he’s grown up enough to understand how much you need it.
You think, Maybe it’s okay to be a cake that tastes like cereal, that’s also a muffin. And to be a parent who’s bursting on the inside, totally amazed by this person, who can also still give laundry pointers, and figure out gifts, and order a real (cake-flavored) cake, and handle logistics of picking up grandparents at the airport and getting everyone to the graduation venue, where, once inside, you are fully allowed to melt into a big, sticky, corny, sugary mess.
You recommend Trader Joe’s Strawberry & Corn Flake Muffin & Loaf Cake Mix for a solar eclipse party (during the eclipse) or a blindfolded family reunion dessert contest, where at least it will give you all something to talk about. Just remember the mix is—like childhood—only available for a limited time.
