Raspberry and White Chocolate Muffins

I saw some raspberries in the supermarket and they were calling to me so I bought them and put them in the fridge and couldn't think of a thing to do with them that didn't involve cake. So cake it was. I had a choice of 2 recipes that are quite similar, the Ainsley Harriott one and this one on Muffin Recipes. As I had to use up all the raspberries I went for the second one. It made 20 cupcake size and 4 muffin size which came out a bit tougher than I would have liked, maybe could have done with reducing the oven temp a bit. I made the small ones to prevent the kids from eating too many. I've tried cutting up larger muffins and only giving them half but they are wise to it now and expect the rest! The smaller ones took about 17 minutes to bake.

Raspberry muffins with white chocolate chips

400g plain flour
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
100g white choc chips

2 eggs
125 ml vegetable oil
250 ml milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
200 g sugar

150g raspberries

• Preheat the oven to 200°C (gas mk 6, 400°F). Place the egg, oil, milk, vanilla essence and sugar in a mixing bowl and beat together until sugar has dissolved.

• In another large bowl, thoroughly mix the flour, baking powder and salt. Add the white chocolate chips - mix.

• Add the liquid mix to the dry, and roughly mix it in - it does not have to be absolutely smooth. Add the raspberries last and mix very, very carefully not to break up the fruits (you can never avoid a few of them mixing in with the dough...).

• Fill a muffin tray with paper muffin cases, and then fill each case approximately two thirds with the muffin mixture. Bake the muffins for 25 minutes.

White Chocolate and Cranberry Brownies

Apologies about the break in cakey updates again, I'll try and get back up to speed as soon as I can. I have been trying to sort out the house which has involved a lot of furniture shifting. I've also repeated a lot of recipes as I've been lacking in imagination and had demands for cake to meet. The lemon poppyseed loaf and the jaffa loaf have been done again a couple of times. I think they will become part of my permanent recipe collection. I keep all my recipes from online in a file. If they work they get to stay and if they don't they get chucked on the recycling pile as punishment for wasting my time! Saves me being overrun with too many bits of paper.

Anyhow, this recipe is an adapted version of one I copied and pasted from a forum ages ago. I wanted to make a white choc brownie for Mr Freak-of-Nature after trying this one, minus the chillis! It was more like a sponge traybake than sticky like a brownie. Still very nice though. It was the sheer amount of white chocolate buttons my children were given for Christmas that spurred me into trying again. Seriously, they would still be eating them at Easter as I am a mean mummy and only allow them a few at a time. The original recipe calls for 150g skinned hazelnuts. I looked at the ones in the supermarket and could only find ones with skins on and I have no idea how to de-skinnify them so I grabbed a bag of cranberries instead. If you know the secret of bald nuts let me know!

White Chocolate Brownies

125g white chocolate
100g unsalted butter
285g golden caster sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
85g dried cranberries
225g white chocolate chunks or buttons
175g strong plain flour

• Preheat oven to Gas 5/190c fan
• Line a tin approx 20cm x 24cm with aluminium foil and grease lightly or use baking paper to line.
• Melt chocolate and butter in a pan. This may look really separated and curdled but don't worry it will be fine once the flour is added.
• Remove from heat and add sugar- stir until well mixed. Take time to do this stage or the sugar will not all dissolve in cooking and the brownies may be gritty.
• Add eggs one at a time, then vanilla, cranberries and chocolate chunks.
• Stir in flour thoroughly and pour into prepared tin.
• Bake for 30 minutes in the centre of the oven.
• A skewer inserted into the centre of the tray should come out slightly sticky- don't keep cooking till the skewer is clean as in other cake recipes or your brownies will overcook and be dry.
• Remove from the oven and place on a rack. Allow to cool completely. Remove from tin, peel off foil, cut into squares and dust with icing sugar

Happy New Year!!!!

Apologies for the delay in posting, my New Year resolution of sorting out my house and life in general seems to have taken over a bit, resulting in an additional blog. I have been making and baking things all over the Christmas period, I had a few Bad Things Happen with some fudge I was trying to make. It suddenly went very granulated, I have no idea what went wrong but I think candy making is a skill I have yet to acquire. I got my BEAUTIFUL orange Kitchenaid. I had it well before the big day but felt so guilty I took my time getting it out of the box and using it. Mr AG has had to do a lot of overtime to pay for it which means he hasn't seen the children as much as he would normally. Girl is getting to the Daddy's Girl stage and seems to have missed him the most.

Other fantastic foodie presents I have received are a gorgeous Nigella cake stand in black from my Secret Santa on Damsels. Thank you Janice!! My sister bought me a set of number and alphabet biscuit cutters in a box. I will hopefully be making use of those for Boy's birthday that is coming up later in the month. I also had some Christmas themed ones I will put away for next year.

I didn't manage to take pictures of everything I made which is a shame as I finally perfected Baileys and White Chocolate Cheesecake, it looked fabulous. I learned from previous experience it sticks to the tin so I lined it to within an inch of it's life and it came out perfectly!

Mini Muffins

Have a bit of catching up to do!! I made two batches of mini muffins for my sister-in-law to take into work as she has been there a year. Muffins used to be one of those things I just couldn't get right, I have spent ages looking for and trying out different recipes. The Delia one for Chocolate Drop Mini Muffins , I spent so long reading the damned recipe I left the butter in the microwave (cue temper!) Even when I calmed down and made them again properly they weren't quite right. I wanted ones that don't stick to the cases for a start.
I eventually found one online that I changed around a little bit to make the quantity slightly different as I hate having any spare mixture left over, it's a pet peeve of mine. I like them to all fit in the oven in full trays. Also I changed a couple of the ingredients so I think I can now claim it as my own.

Double Chocolate Mini Muffins
Makes 24

75g/3oz plain flour
1tsp baking powder
25g/1oz cocoa
75g/3oz granulated sugar
75g/3oz milk chocolate chips or chopped up chocolate
50g/2oz melted butter, cooled slightly
100ml/4 fl.oz milk
1 large free-range egg, beaten

1. Sieve the flour, baking powder and cocoa into a bowl. Stir in the sugar and chocolate
2. Make a well in the middle and pour on the butter, then the milk and egg.
3. Mix roughly with a fork until just combined. The mix will be very runny.
4. Fill tray with mini-muffin cases and divide the mixture carefully between them. The choc chips cause it to splash everywhere!! I find it best to put it in a jug and pour, or if you have a bowl with a spout use that from the start. Keep close to the cases to minimise ploppage.
5. Bake at Gas 5, 190c, fan oven 180c for 12 minutes. They will be well risen and lovely and shiny. Can be eaten warm or cold.

To make plain choc chip ones replace the cocoa with 25g/1oz more flour and add a bit of vanilla essence. I was also after a recipe for white chocolate and cranberry ones as this one didn't work out at all. They didn't rise and were very sticky and too sweet. I tried it out for the first time with the plain muffin recipe and they turned out fab. 50g/2oz of white choc is enough as too much tends to make them erupt a little but it does go all nice and caramelly. I didn't add the cranberries to the mixture as they make the aforementioned ploppage problem 10x worse. I half filled the cases, added 2 dried cranberries to each and then covered them over with more mixture. I find they take a couple of minutes longer to bake than the double choc ones.

I was making 48 at once so I decided to put all the ingredients ready to save any 'Crap I forgot the sugar/butter' moments. Made me feel very Blue Peter.