Mini Strawberries & Chocolate Chips Muffin

I had a little 'free' time this morning, so I thought I could quickly whip up a tray of muffins rich in strawberries flavour by using the balance of the strawberries milk and yogurt in the fridge. At the same time, I was really excited each time getting my daughter involved in my baking projects. She loves helping me to crack eggs, add in the different ingredient and do the mixing. Watching her stirring gently the batter amazed me! It is so wonderful to see her so happy doing all small little things together with me in the kitchen each time!

I didn't refer to any particular recipe but just recalling the ingredients and the volume used for the sunny morning muffins. I think they are still in my head as I had baked them not long ago.. I hope :) I substituted the orange juice with the strawberries milk and maintain the amount for most of the ingredients used except the walnuts and other fruits. I made a mistake here. I should have increased the volume for the strawberries milk since the chocolate chips that I added in to the muffins were dry and create no moist as compared to the strawberries juice and blueberries for the sunny morning muffins!

The muffins were heavy and a little bit dry. I would not pose the recipe here as I think it wasn't a success project. Nevertheless, the consolations that I had were that they looked really cute, sweet and adorable in the pink mini muffin cases and that my dear husband and daughter liked them!! Think they didn't mind the heavy texture nor the cakey one :)

Sunny Morning Muffins

I bought some bananas, strawberries and blueberries over the weekend and happened to stumble to the Food Network.com website when I was searching for other blueberries recipes. The craving for blueberries is still lingering in me!! I baked the muffins following the recipe this morning for our breakfast. My husband and I both ate 5 each. My daughter enjoyed it very much too and she has it again for her snack later in the day at school. I thought of freezing some for snacks for the week but they are too good to resist or keep for the rest of the week. You just can't stop eating them especially when they were just out from the oven!!. It tasted so good that I know I will bake it time and again. What's more it is healthy and smart way to get the children eating more fruits and use up whatever balance of fruits you have in the fridge.


The muffins are moist not dense, fruity, fragrant with the mixture of berries, bananas, lemon and they are nutty. The light cinnamon and nutmeg spices blended in extremely well with the fruity flavours of the muffins. The taste of the strawberries, blueberries, bananas, lemon is significant by itself but none is overpowering the other. It was really a balance and a good combination!!

Sunny Morning Muffins

Ingredients

Wet ingredients:
1 cup strawberries, chopped and mixed with 2 tablespoon of sugar.
1 cup of sugar
1 ripe banana, mashed
2 large egg (room temp)
1/4 cup vegetable oil/ 56g melted butter
1 lemon, zested

Dry ingredients:
1 1/2 cup of flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
pinch of ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp of ground nutmeg

Fold in :
1/2 pint or about 1 cup of blueberries
1 cupped of chopped walnut

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 deg C/350 deg F. Line the muffin tray with muffin cases

2. Mixed the chopped strawberries with the sugar and leave it aside for at least 15minutes to let the juice out.

3. In a mixing bowl, sift the flour with baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt.

4. Melt the butter (if you are using butter) and leave it cool to room temp. In a medium size mixing bowl mix the butter with egg, banana, lemon, sugar and strawberries.

5. Add the dry ingredients in 3 batches to the wet ingredients until just combine.

6. Fold in the blueberries and walnut and fill the batter 2/3 full in each muffin cases.

7. Bake for about 30 minutes*1

Notes:
*1. I have increased the baking time to 50 minutes as I find that the muffins are still very wet at 30 minutes.

2. The amt of salt is high compared to other muffin recipe but it wasn't salty at all.

3. May try to use more lemon zest if you prefer strong lemon flavour. I may try to substitute the lemon with orange zest and I think the muffins will turn out nice too! :)

4. I divided the batter into 2 as I want to make some without walnuts as I know she didn't know how to eat them

5. Both version i.e with or without walnuts taste as good. I love both infact i find the ones without walnuts are more intense for the fruity flavours.

6. Sprinkle some walnuts as topping if you prefer.

7. The muffins are flat and perhaps due to the fruity ingredients.

Blueberries Yogurt Muffins II

I have craving for blueberries lately. I bought 2 punnets of blueberries and intended to use one of the punnet to bake a tray of blueberries muffins. I came across this blog which has now become my favourite cooking and baking blog. I refer this site for the recipe but yet again I didn't follow it exactly as I didn't want to have a dense and heavy muffins this time. So I thought of not using the 2 mixing bowls method but creaming one instead. I have also replaced the vegetable oil with butter though not as healthy but I just have the craving for light buttery muffins. I did a comparison of this recipe with the one which I did sometimes ago. The ingredients used are almost similiar except that this recipe replaced the full cream milk with orange juice, added the vanilla flavour and used less one egg. As for the topping, I used about 5 tablespoons of flour with 2 tablespoon of butter and about 1/4 cup of brown sugar mixed with nutmeg and cinnamon.

The muffins were moist, soft, cakey and light with strong blueberries flavour!! I would said that this is an improved recipe from my previous experiment. Yummy! Yummy!!

Blueberries Yogurt Muffins

Ingredients

220g / 2cups of plain flour
170g brown sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
(Sift the dry ingredients together)

1/4 cup of freshly squeezed orange juice
56g unsalted butter (room temp) or 2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup vanilla yogurt
2 large eggs(room temp)
250g blueberries

Topping :
5 tbsp plain flour
2 tbsp cold butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
Cinnamon & nutmeg (to your liking)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 190 deg C. Line the muffin tray with muffins casing.

2. Cream the butter and sugar until light, pale and fluffy. Add in the egg one by one and then vanilla essence follow by the yogurt and orange juice.

3. Lower the speed of the mixer and add in the sifted dried ingredients in three batches until just incorporated. Do not overmix.

4. Fold in the blueberries in 3 batches. Do this gently and fast.

5. Using 2 spoons, fill the muffin cups 2/3 full.

6. Bake in the oven for about 18 - 20 minutes until a skewer came out clean when inserted to the muffins.

Chocolate Muffins

I had planned a week ahead to visit my girl friend's new home and hoped to bake a tray of muffins if my daughter napped well for our snacks later. She really slept well and long enough that afternoon giving me enough time to do cooking, baking and some housework :)

Having said that, I always kept in mind to bake something easy and fast. I mentioned in one of my previous posts that I took effort to remember the basic muffins recipe by hard. The effort paid off as I recalled the recipe within seconds and it took me less than 15 minutes to prepare and mix all the ingredients. It was so satisfying to act like a pro home baker haa haa :)

I used the same Chocolate Chip Muffins recipe. The variations I made were as followed :

1. I added in about 1 1/2 tbsp of cocoa powder to the flour and sift them together with the salt and baking powder
2. Since I had about 50g baking chocolate left, I used the double boil method and melt the chocolate. I then mixed the melted chocolate to the batter at the step of folding in the chocolate chips.
3. I used the Buttercup butter which is slightly salted and I found that it tasted less buttery.
4. Do not use vanilla essence for this recipe.


It tasted not as good as I expected. Perhaps this was due to the different butter that I used. I normally use unsalted butter from Lurpark. The muffins are soft though and the chocolate tasted just nice to my preference.

I was so happy to see my girlfriend's daughter and my gal tucking in the muffins. Nothing is much more rewarding than seeing your family members and friends happily eating and finishing up your baking and cooking creations! :)

Blueberries and Yogurt Muffins

I was searching around for cake recipes suitable for diabetic patient. My father-in-law is diabetic and I thought of baking him a cake for his birthday. Found one Mango Cream Cheese Pound Cake but sadly was not able to bake it in time due to some changes in the celebration plans :( Anyway, I was glad to bump into a pastry chef's blog who discovered having diabetes shortly after enrolling himself in a culinary school. Check out this website to look for baking tips and recipes suitable for diabetes.

Originally I wanted to bake the Blueberries Muffins following the recipes found in diabetic pastry blog but I hold back because I got to know through youtube on what Splenda really is. Not sure how true it is but i think better be cautious than sorry. At the end, I followed this Blueberries and Yogurt Muffin Recipe and did quite a lot of variations to it.


I like the topping for the muffin most as it was so crunchy and it tasted exactly like those crumble pies if you ever tried one before.


The taste of the cinnamon and nutmeg was light but it helped mellowing down the sourish taste of the berries and enhanced the overall aroma of the muffins.


I used 2 types of blueberries from different farms. Perhaps that explains the two different purple tones of the muffins. This is really a healthy snack since it is fruity and uses less butter. Next time I will try to replace the butter with canola or sunflower oil and replace 1/3 of the plain flour with the wheat flour to make it more wholesome and healthier.


BLUEBERRIES AND YOGURT MUFFINS

Ingredients

(Make 15)
220g Plain Flour
1/4 tsp of salt
56g unsalted butter (soften)
170g castor sugar
55g brown sugar
2 eggs lightly bitten
170ml full cream milk
90g plain yogurt
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1tsp baking soda
218g blueberries
½ cup pecans (optional)


Topping
30g plain flour
30g cold unsalted butter (my suggestion)
2 tbsp brown sugar
A dash of nutmeg and cinnamon

Method

1. Sift flour together with salt, baking powder and baking soda. Put aside

2. Grease the muffin tray and line the muffin tray with the muffin cases. Preheat the oven at 200deg C. Baking time 20-25 min

3. Mix butter with sugar until creamy, pale and fluffy about 5 - 7 minutes at high speed. Mix in yogurt, milk, eggs until incorporated at low speed.

4. Add in flour, salt, baking powder and soda and mix until incorporated . Do not over mix.

5. Fold in blueberries.

6. Fill the muffin cases about 2/3 full

7. For the topping, add plain flour, brown sugar, a dash of cinnamon and nutmeg together using the back of the fork. Rub in about 30g cold butter until bread crumb is form. Sprinkle on top of the muffin before baking.

Notes :
1. I have added half water to the full cream milk to make a 2% milk
2. I have reduced the castor sugar to about 90g and keep the measurement for the brown sugar.
2. Do not add in too much berries as it will increase the density of the cake. Don't make the same mistake that I did.
3. Best to be eaten on the day when they are baked as the toppings turn soggy the next day. Also, because they were so dense inside due to too much berries you can't really keep it more than 3 days.

Recipe from About.Com : Southern Food

Chocolate Chip Muffins with Nutella and Creamy Peanut Butter

Thank you for dropping by and read my humble blog! It is really heart warming to receive feedback from a friend who now wanted to dig out her baking 'barang-barang' and start baking again after reading my blog. Do share with me your baking experience and let us learn together! :) Speaking from a very novice baker's point of view, I always recommend my friends who have not baked before but inspired to bake now, to start with a simple and easy project i.e baking muffins.


Muffins are very healthy snacks for kids. They are easy to make because the main tips of muffins baking are 'do not overmix' which means it saves a lot of work and 'do not overbake' which means time saving! Hmm sounds like those Quality Improvement project that I used to run previously!

Muffins belongs to quick bread family like biscuits, scones, waffles, pancakes etc. There are 2 mixing techniques for muffins i.e the two mixing bowls methods or creaming method. Check out this site for more information about quick bread - muffins. It is a good practice to read and find out more information before you venture into a baking project.

I got the basic muffins making recipe from Everyday Food Magazines, May 2008 by Martha Stewart. The original recipe used the 2 bowls mixing method. However, I am more used to the creaming method so I just followed my heart!


This is a fool proofed recipe and you can do a lot of variations for the add-ins like chocolate chips, nuts, seeds, berries, vegetables, cheese etc without changing the measurement of other ingredients. I chose to add in the chocolate chips as I just bought one and the balance is still sitting in the fridge now. Also I thought I should be more experimental this time by adding in the nutella and creamy peanut butter for the fillings which the original recipe never called for.

The chocolate chip muffins with nutella filling tasted so good as the nutella flavour blended in so well with the chips. The muffins are soft and buttery but not dense.

I like especially the crust on top of the muffins. It gave you that kind of umph when you bite a chunk of it....Yummy!!


However, this was not the case for the muffins with creamy peanut butter. The cake texture did not change generally but the overall bites were not satisfying as the peanut butter was very sticky and the flavour just don't blend in with the whole cake and the chips. Won't be baking this next time.

Ever since the first bake of this chocolate chip muffins, I have memorised the recipe by hard. It is worthwhile storing this recipe in your memory bank and you will know why in my next few posts which are on muffins also!

CHOCOLATE CHIP MUFFINS WITH NUTELLA & PEANUT BUTTER

Ingredients

(Make 12)
220g Self Raising Flour
½ tsp of salt
170g unsalted butter (soften)
140g castor sugar
2 eggs lightly bitten
120ml full cream milk
½ tsp pure vanilla essence
165g semi sweet mini chocolate-chip or about a cup

Fillings:
Nutella
Creamy peanut butter

Method

1. Sift flour together with salt and put aside.

2. Grease the muffin tray and line the muffin tray with the muffin cases. Preheat the oven at 190deg C. Baking time 20 -25 min

3. Mix butter with sugar until creamy, pale and fluffy about 5-7 minutes using the electronic mixer at high speed.

4. Lower the speed to medium and add one egg at a time and continue to beat until it is well incorporated. Add in another egg and vanilla essensse. Continue to beat until it is well incorporated.

5. Add in flour and milk alternately in three portions until finished. Do not over mix.

6. Add in chocolate-chips in 2-3 portions and fold the batter.

7. Fill the muffin casing about 1/3 full and add in a teaspoon of nutella for six muffin cases. Cover up with another 1/3 of the batter.

8. Do likewise for the other 6 muffin cases but fill them up with creamy peanut butter this time.

Notes :
1. I am using Hershey mini chocolate chips.
2. The measurement given for the sugar is a reduced amount from the original recipe which is 170g. I decided not to use too much sugar. You may add sugar if you wish the muffins to be a little sweeter.
3. You may add in other suitable flavoured milk if you wish.
4. Another variation is you can put the nutella on top of the batter and swirl it with a tooth pick before putting into the oven. I will try doing this next time.
5. You may change the milk to low fat milk or by simply adding half water to half of the full cream milk to make it as 2% milk.
6. For all the recipes in this blog, I will try to simplify from the originals.

Recipe fram Everyday Food Magazine, May 2008

Banana Muffins/ Cake

My whole family loves bananas a lot especially my daughter and my father in law. I will usually try to get a comb on Saturday if my in laws are coming over to stay. Since there were some over ripe bananas left over after a weekend, I decided to try baking banana cake as i read a lot on internet and books that this should be pretty well easy for a beginner to bake. Browsing through all the resources that I have, I decided to bake this using Agnes Chang's recipe.

I baked the banana muffins and the banana cake in 2 seperate occasions. I left no choice but to bake this as muffins since the most important ingredient that i need for any banana recipes that is the bananas left only 3 pcs! So I decided to mash 2 of them and left one for decoration. I halfed all the baking ingredients of course.

My daugther and my husband are always the prima tester for all my cooked and baked goodies. Yeah they are the guinea pigs! :) As any other mums, I always concern about the nutritional intakes of my daughter. So, if I can I will try to use checimals minimally and wisely in all my cookings and bakings.

So for the muffins recipe, I didn't use the baking soda at all since the baking powder itself already consists of the baking soda. The muffins turned out to be very moist but not greasy, it is soft but not airy and light as it shouldn't be! It tasted so good but it doesn't look very presentable as it sunk in the middle a little!

Well this is expected as I didn't add in the baking soda to boost up the leavening effect. I didn't fill up the muffin cases 3/4 full as my batter can barely made six! So when the batter leavened, it didn't successfully flow out to get that nice curve at the edge as it was blocked by the muffin cases. It looked like being squeezed to the centre didn't it?




Read somewhere that we should fill up the empty muffin holes with water for even baking. I did that for my muffins. No regret of not adding baking soda for the muffins though.

The banana cake which I baked in a loaf tin was not successful. The inner part of the batter was not cooked and it has a few big holes and the biggest one was in the centre of the loaf!

I thought of baking this to serve the hungry pangs of my hubby over the weekend when he needs to work. Anyway he didn't know about this :)


Very disappointed but still I was glad that we were able to try the sides of the cake. It tasted a bit heavy though. I used the self raising flour and therefore did not use the baking powder as instructed in the recipe.

Read in JoyofBaking.com and other sites and found some baking tips and clues to the failed project :


Q1 : Why use baking powder and baking soda?
A1 : Baking powder consists of baking soda, one or two acid salt (cream of tartar and sodium aluminium sulfate) and cornstarch. The purpose of the baking powder and baking soda is to leaven the batter and baking soda is normally used for acidic ingredients, chocolate & cocoa, honey, maple syrup to neutralise the acidic ingredients and soften the cake at the same time leaven the cake. Baking powder that we used has 2-staged leavening effects that happens at different time. The first stage happens when liquid is added to the baking powder. This step happens when baking powder is added to the batter. The baking soda in the baking powder will mix with cream of tartar and create gas bubbles called carbon dioxide in the batter. The second stage of leavening happens when the gas bubbles enlarge when exposed to thebheat in the oven. (Baking soda able to create reddening effect on batter when mix with chocolate/ cocoa powder.)

Q2: What happen when too much baking powder is used?
A2: Too much baking powder will cause the batter to collapse. Too little will cause the cake has no volume and compact.

Q3: Why there is a big hole in the cake?
A3: When use baking powder and baking soda, you must sift them and mix them well before putting in the batter if not there will be a big whole in the cake. (I used self raising flour and did not use baking soda so why there are holes on my banana loaf cake remains as a myth until i found the answer!)

Q4: Why the inner cake is not cooked?
A4: Too low temperature or too short time of baking. (This is what happened to me as I bake the loaf for about 25 minutes as I was rushing out to have breakfast with my family friends. Hubby read wrongly the baking time as this is the baking time to bake the muffins instead.)


BANANA MUFFINS/ CAKE

Ingredients

180g unsalted butter
180g castor sugar
2 eggs
4 ripe bananas, coarsely mashed
1/8 banana essence optional (which I did not use)
3 tbsp of milk mixed with 1 tbsp of lemon juice

Dry ingredients :
240g plain flour
1tsp of baking powder
1tsp of baking soda

Decoration : 2 ripe bananas, slimed and ½ lime

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 deg C/350 deg F. Grease and baseline a 10” x 6” loaf tin.

2. Cream butter and sugar and gradually add in eggs.

3. Mix in the mashed bananas (add in bananas essence at this stage if you are using). Pour in the sifted dried ingredients and mix until well incorporated.

4. Pour the batter into a cupcake or a loaf tin and bake for about 20 – 25 min.

5. If you are making the muffins squeeze lime juice over banana slices arrange banana slices on top of the cake as decoration.

6. Remove the cake from the oven and leave to cool before serving.