Vanilla-Raspberry-Cupcakes

These muffins (or cupcakes - I still haven't decided on the terminology) were specially requested for a barbecue of a friend of mine so I wanted to make them look extra pretty.

While browsing through my various baking books I came across a muffin recipe that used white chocolate chips and immediately had a vision of a muffin as white as possible with the occasional pink spot. I decided to supplement the white chocolate with almond slices and raspberries for the pink.

For the icing I wanted to use a white chocolate glazing. Now, I'm not very experienced (yet) with icings, but I found simple instructions on how to make your own chocolate glazing on the internet. Unfortunately it didn't turn out as planned. I expected a thin fluid to dip my muffins. Instead I ended up with a paste which I applied to the muffins with a spatula.

Vanilla-Raspberry-Muffins

250g flour
2.5 tsp baking powder
0.5 tsp natron

100g white chocolate chips

100g almond slices

1 egg

100g sugar

0.5 tsp vanilla extract

80ml sunflower oil

250g yoghurt

200g raspberries

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Prepare a muffin tin with paper cups (alternatively brush the tin with sunflower oil).

In a large bowl sift together the flour, baking powder and natron. Mix in the chocolate chips and the almond slices.

In a separate bowl scramble the egg and add the sugar, vanilla extract, sunflower oil and yoghurt.

Mix the dry and the wet ingredients. Carefully add the raspberries and fold them into the batter. Try not to brake the raspberries to prevent the batter from getting pink.

Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin tin and bake for 20-25min.

For the frosting melt 200g of white chocolate over a water bath together with 2 tbsp of butter and 2 tbsp powdered sugar. Apply to the cooled down muffins with a spatula and decorate with a sugar-covered almond.

Bailey's Chocolate Muffins

A few days ago, I tried out a recipe for homemade whisky-cream-liquor. Instead of drinking it all by myself, I've searched the internet for other uses. I found this simple recipe for Bailey's-Muffins on kochbar.de:

260g flour
2 tbsp cocoa powder
3 tsp baking powder
75g chocolate chips
50 g walnuts, roughly chopped

1 egg
80 ml sunflower oil
100 ml Bailey's (or homemade whisky-cream-liquor)

100g sugar
2 tbsp instant coffee powder

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Prepare a muffin tin with paper cups.

Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix well.

In a separate bowl mix together the wet ingredients with the sugar and the coffee powder.

Combine the dry and wet ingredients, mix quickly and spoon the batter into the muffin cups. Bake immediately for about 25 min.

Actually, I tried something new with this recipe, because it was the first time that I froze the muffins before baking. Just make sure, that there's enough space in your freezer before starting and that you line the muffin tray with paper cups. After mixing everything together fill the batter into the paper cups and put the whole muffin tin into the freezer. After the muffins are frozen you can take them out of the tin and store them more conveniently in a plastic dish or bag or something similar. To bake just put the muffins back into the tin and put them into the preheated oven. Add about 5 min to the total baking time.

Lemon-Raspberry-Muffins

I made these for the second birthday party of a little girl. It was a great excuse to go wild with pink icing and all kinds of glittery decoration. My inner little girl had a great time preparing the muffins :-)

I used an adapted recipe from this lovely book by the Cookie Girl that I've bought recently. It's as pink as my muffins and has a cute layout with fairy tale pictures. Actually, the recipe that I've used is for cupcakes, but I have so far not managed to find out the exact difference between muffins and cupcakes. I ended up defining my own distinctions, mainly based on ingredients and baking procedures and these go into my muffin-category.
 

Lemon-Raspberry-Muffins
Recipe adapted from Eat Me!
200g of flour
2 tsp of baking powder
45g of ground almonds
2 eggs
90ml of sunflower oil
150g of sugar
grated zest of 1 lemon
250ml of greek yoghurt
0.5 tbsp of lemon aroma
250g of raspberry

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C.

Line a muffin tin with paper muffin cases (preferably pink ones).

Sift together the flour and the baking powder and mix with the almonds.

In a separate bowl mix the rest of the ingredients excluding the raspberries. Once the oven is hot, add the raspberries and carefully combine the wet ingredients and the flour/baking powder. Stir until the flour is wet, but don't let the dough stand around for long, because the muffins will get sticky and hard.

Immediately spoon the dough into the muffin tin and bake for 20-30 minutes.

After they are cool go wild with the decoration. I've used this Dr. Oetker Lillifee icing in pink (with glitter!) and various sprinkles.

The muffins went down well with the kids and also the adults at the birthday party. I guess there's a little girl that likes pink glitter in all of us... :-)

Easy Start

So, here we go... To make it easy for myself I'll start with blogging about last year's Easter muffins.


Why easy? Because I don't actually remember the exact recipe, thereby avoiding having to write a long post with detailed instructions. Why Easter muffins? Because I made them somewhen around Easter. We didn't actually eat them during the Easter weekend itself but I still got to use all the colourful Easter decoration without it being too out of season.


I made two kinds of muffins. Both times I probably used a basic muffin recipe and simply added differently flavoured yoghurt and fruits and nuts (I believe I ended up with raspberry-almond-muffins and dried-apricot-chocolate-muffins). Plus - as is obvious from the pictures - I added lots and lots of all kinds of decorations :-)