tipnique of the week, October 18, 2013

As some of you know, the kitchen, the appetite, and the menuplans have all surrendered to pumpkaphilia this week, and I've been learning so much!
(Pumpkins on the menu, and the acquisition of brain-basketfuls of trivial information. It's a good week.)
First I learned that this stuff:

Is pretty much cooked and mashed butternut squash and other of the very most flavorful varieties of winter squash, aka pumpkin.
So, I decided to try out a tip from my daughter, the brain behind Liz Welch's cakes.
She told me that the last time that she  baked cupcakes, she had a few empty spaces in the pan, and filled them with water. Somehow, she said, that makes the other cupcakes turn out better that if one just leaves those spaces empty.
Here was the test recipe- one of the very best pumpkin bread recipes ever (and there have been quite a few that we've tasted over the years. This one includes chocolate chips, which automatically makes it yummier than a recipe that doesn't include chocolate chips.)
Here's the pan of pumpkin muffins going into the oven with sad, lonely, empty muffin spaces:

 The next tray was just the same, except different.
Same amount of batter, same wrappers, same oven temp, same baking time.
I just put water about half way up the empty spaces before the pan went in the oven.
And then I forgot to take a picture of the second tray. Look at the first tray again please, and imagine water.
Thank you.
Here's what happened:

Water in the pan batch on the left,

empty spaces left empty batch on the right.

This was really pretty weird, because the difference was quite visible. And I don't know why.

Kitchen physicists, if you can please explain, it'll turn a simple tip into a kitchen science lesson, and there's nothing better than eating a warm pumpkin chocolate chip muffin while you learn exactly why it's so yummy.