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Muffins

January 11, 2012 Baking

Rachel Allen’s 30 Day Muffins

Yes, more muffins.  Actually this time because I have a shocking cold, and I can’t sleep.  Seemed as though it might be fun to make breakfast muffins for everyone to have in the morning!  Adapted from Rachel Allen’s 30 day muffin mixture, the theory is that you can leave the mixture in the fridge for 30 days until you next want to make muffins… Does it work? Absolutely!

At the weekend I made a batch of Rachel Allen’s 30 day muffin mixture, and made a batch of blueberry muffins with half of the mixture, and made breakfast muffins with the other half.

Ingredients:
3 eggs
500 ml milk
125 ml sunflower oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract
125g dark brown sugar

100g caster sugar
460g plain flour (or 300g plain flour, 160g wholemeal flour)
25g bran (which I omitted)
½ teaspoon salt
2 round teaspoons bicarbonate of soda

Method:

Whisk the eggs, sugar, milk and vanilla.  Add the sunflower oil and stir well.  Sieve all of the dry ingredients into a bowl.  Tip in the wet ingredients and barely mix – store in the fridge until required.
When you’re in a baking mood (or can’t sleep), preheat the oven to 180C/gas 4.  Decide on your variation, and ensure you stir the stored mixture before using.  I use those cafe-style muffin cases – you do need to cook them in a holey tin, or they’ll unravel.  Fill the muffin cases until three quarters full. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until firm to the touch and golden.  In the big cases I find they take around 20 minutes.  I leave the muffins to ‘set’ in the tin for 10 minutes or so, before allowing to cool on a wire rack.
So, in the first variation I used about half of the mixture, and stirred in about 100g of blueberries.  I put a couple on top of the muffin to ensure they didn’t sink, which is why some look as though they’ve burst, perhaps you’d want to pop them just below the surface.
In the second variation, I really wanted a breakfast muffin, so I put in about 1 cup of Rude Health’s Top Banana Porridge mixture (which also contains roasted hazelnuts and maple flakes).  I wanted some fruit in the mixture too, just in case the oatflakes dried out the mixture too much.   I chopped in about 100g of blackberries, and distributed them through the mixture.  
The muffins definitely were more dense than the blueberry version, and decidedly more breakfast than dessert.  Very good, and the general consensus is that they’re better than straight fruit muffins.  I assume this is what the bran would bring to the original recipe, but bran can be a little difficult to digest – so the oats are a good alternative.  The Rude Health mixture gives just a hint of the sweetness and perfume of the banana, but the acidity of the blackberry cuts through that!  Add the crunch of the hazelnuts, and the chewy oats and you’re on to a breakfast winner.
I will definitely make up another batch of the mixture, and will keep posting variations as I think of them :0)
You can find the recipe in Rachel’s book, Bake >

January 1, 2012 Baking

Toffee Fudge Muffins

Okay, forget that New Year’s promise of dieting for a moment, and have a toffee fudge muffin on me :0)  The little fudge chunks at the bottom of the muffins turn that bottom bit into a pseudo treacle sponge – delicious!

Ingredients:
255g plain flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
110g cinnamon sugar
100g bag of baking mini fudge chunks
1 egg
240 ml milk
90ml vegetable oil (or melted butter)

Method:

Place all of the dry ingredients into a bowl and mix thoroughly to ensure they are free of lumps etc.  Then pop in the fudge chunks, and coat in the dry ingredients.

Thoroughly mix together the egg, milk and vegetable oil.  Pour into the dry ingredients, and barely mix – the idea is not to work the dough in any way, but to ‘just combine’ everything together.  Spoon into muffin wrapper – if using the kind I show here, do make sure you pop them into a holed baking tin to ensure they stay together!

Bake for 20-25 mins at 190-200oC.  I tested mine with a cake skewer, and left them to rest for 5 minutes in the ‘holey’ tin, to let them ‘settle’ a little before popping them onto a cooling tray.

January 1, 2012 Baking

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

Bloomin’ cheek… Pointed the toffee muffins out to the Hubby, who remarked rather pointedly that he only eats lemon poppy seed muffins.  Then he popped off for a quick run… Well.  The 10yo and I weren’t going to stand for that, so we found a recipe, and made some while he was out!!!

I’ve adapted a recipe from The English Kitchen blog, which had a really lovely lemon zest crunch on the top, which I thought would work well.  By now I’m obviously in a hurry, so my modifications are more about timing than anything else…

Ingredients:
Grated zest of 5 medium lemons
220g vanilla caster sugar (1 cup)
335g of self raising flour (2 1/4 cup)
2 Tbsp poppy seeds
80ml of fresh lemon juice (1/3 cup)
250ml of milk (1 cup)
60g of vegetable oil (1/3 cup)
2 large free range eggs, beaten

Preheat the oven to 180oC.  Pop six large cafe-style muffin cases into a ‘holey’ tin (otherwise they will unfurl!)

Rub together the lemon zest and the sugar, and then set aside 3 tablespoons for later.  Sift the flour into the remainder and stir in the poppy seeds.

Putting lemon juice into milk has the effect of turning it into buttermilk.  I’m assuming you could substitute buttermilk here if you wished…  So, whisk together the lemon juice, milk, beaten eggs and vegetable oil. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and add the liquid all at once.  

The trick with muffins is to avoid overworking the batter, so only stir enough to combine.  Spoon it into the prepared muffin cups, dividing it equally.  (And here that Lorraine Pascal trick of using one of those old-fashioned icecream scoops really will help, especially if you have a 10yo as your pâtissier.  Sprinkle the tops of each with the reserved lemon sugar.
Bake for 30 minutes.  I tested mine with a cake tester, but the rules about a clean skewer apply too.  I left mine in the pan to ‘settle’ for a few minutes too, before transferring them to a cooling rack.

Et voila! Laissez mon mari manger son gâteau! (Let my husband eat his cake!!)

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I’m passionate about food, its provenance and its sustainability. As a technical cook, I like to see what’s happening in the kitchens of Michelin starred restaurants, but you’re just as likely to find me at home making sourdough. You can find some of my recipes in In The Mix 2, an award-winning Thermomix cookbook.

I’m also truly blessed – I can open my fridge at any time and know it’s crammed with all manner of loveliness – but that’s not the case for everyone. There are people all around me in the UK who rely on food banks to feed their kids, and themselves, and every box of cereal or teabag makes a difference. You can donate food to your local food bank, or time, or money, and if you want more information the best starting place is http://www.trusselltrust.org.

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