Muffin Mysteries

About nine years ago, I got an email from an old school friend. It only said one thing, which was something like:
"How do you make muffins do the spilling-over-the-top thing?"

I still don't know. Any cupcakes I make are flat at the top. I did once get the desired effect when I used bicarbonate of soda instead of baking powder. They looked fantastic but tasted disgusting. I've just looked on the internet and one suggestion is to use more baking powder. I might try that next time.

My next question is: how do you keep chocolate chips on the top from burning? And how do you help chocolate chunks which are slightly cuboid keep their shape?

Today I made some chocolate fairy cakes which had chocolate chips and a bit of a gooey toffee centre. I was inspired by a muffin I bought in a theatre cafe on Thursday evening. It was chocolate batter with chocolate chips and had little squidges of toffee inside. It was lovely.

I did buy milk chocolate to break into bits and pop into the cake mix, but then I was struck with an idea which would use up some leftovers, thus creating more space in the fridge.
I had some chocolate sauce in the fridge which had been made for the ice-cream cake I made recently. The cake had long since gone, and I was left with the chocolate sauce made of chocolate and double cream which, as you might expect, had the hardness of truffles. I chopped it up into little chunks and shoved bits into the cake mix. I half-filled the cake cases, then dribbled in some toffee sauce which I had also made to accompany the long-gone ice-cream cake. I made sure the toffee got covered with cake mix.

I got a pretty good result. The toffee sauce didn't go hard (good). The exposed bits of chocolate chunk did not burn (good) but spread a little and did not keep their shape (disappointing).

They taste very nice, by the way, but I would still like your hints for spilling-over-the-top chunky choc chip muffin success.

Cake-o-rama / a tardy rice dream

I have recently made two of these thingummies. Here is a fine coconut cake:



The cake itself was a very basic cake sponge with added desiccated coconut. What really makes it is the frosting, an indulgent mix of cream cheese, icing sugar, more desiccated coconut, a wee bit of fat and do you know what the magic ingredient is? The real kick? It's a dash of zingy lemon juice which cuts through the sweet fat rather nicely.

This is very late, but here are my pretty spring rolls from my rice paper / homemade seitan phase. Which may return. I don't know yet. The colour you see in the rolls is provided by nasturtium flowers and leaves, of which there was a sizeable glut last month.



The second cake, in case you were wondering, is lying dormant in a dark very cool place, waiting to be decorated. Picture soon.

And here it is:



I saw it once on a Nigella Lawson cookery programme, got very excited by the idea and thought that would be a good dessert for a special occasion. One makes it by mixing crushed biscuit, crushed cinder toffee, honey roast peanuts and chocolate / peanut butter chips with ice cream and freezing it in a spring form cake tin lined with clingfilm. You take it out, serve with warm chocolate sauce, and warm butterscotch sauce and what do you know? It's not unlike eating an ice-cream Snickers. I can't believe I made this for someone's birthday. The only thing I am proud of is that I honey roasted my own peanuts and made my own chocolate / peanut swirled chips because I couldn't find any.

I could probably make a much better ice cream cake, less chaotic, more structured and meaningful. You watch this space.

Tart.

I ate a tawdry lunch of three readymade grilled-from-frozen hash browns with various dips; homemade pesto, some supermarket humous which Mike had left at our house, some Dutch garlic mayonnaise and an oversized slick of sweet chilli sauce. This left me hankering for more food and so I got worked up. I tried to go swimming at my local baths but instead stopped and drooled with my eyes at the cakes at the local deli-cafe. I was determined not to buy a piece, but to make something of my own. So I did, and here is the first proper recipe of this blog (almost).

CHOCOLATE NUT TART

pastry:
6 oz plain white flour
3 oz butter / shortening
1 oz caster sugar
1 medium sized egg
flour for dusting

filling:
7oz of nuts / finely ground nuts e.g. almonds
2 or 3 oz sugar (rats! the only ingredient the quantity of which I did not note!)
2 medium sized eggs, beaten
3 heaped tablespoons cocoa powder, sieved
1 teaspoon good vanilla essence
2 tablespoons of butter / shortening
drop of milk (optional)
nut pieces, skins removed (optional)

1. Preheat oven to gas mark 4
2. Make pastry: rub sieved flour into fat, then add sugar. Beat the egg and then add to the mixture. Use your hands to bind into a dough, handling as little as possible. If the egg is not enough to bind it, add a teaspoon of cold water. Refrigerate the dough for half an hour, or ten minutes in the freezer.
3. Meanwhile, make the filling: if the the nuts are whole use a food processor to grind them down into a flour. Add the sugar, the fat, two eggs, cocoa powder and vanilla essence. The mixture should be a bit like a cake mix- dropping consistency- but look grainy rather than smooth. Add a splash of milk if the mix is too thick.
4. Remove pastry dough from fridge / freezer and roll out until about one eighth inch thick. I used this to line two 6-inch flan dishes, but one ten inch dish may suffice. Fill cases with mixture - here you can press nut halves into the mix if you wish-and bake for 40-45 minutes.

Serve warm with cream.

I'm sure you will have seen similar recipes. I am proud of this because I consulted no recipe book. However, I have discovered writing recipes which other people can follow requires care. Care which I am not sure I have the patience for.

Notes: I used a mixture of ground almonds and whizzed up some "chopped mixed nuts" I found in my cupboard which was mainly peanut I think. Walnut would give an exciting taste I reckon. Almond is a classic though. So is hazelnut. This was the first sweet pastry using an egg I had ever made.

Verdict: The pastry was not as soft as I thought it might be, perhaps more egg next time? But it was subtly sweet and this was good. The nut mixture worked very well. I didn't have any chocolate, so if I made it again, I might use that instead of cocoa.

I confess that I had an excess of pastry dough. I rolled it out into a thick circle, then placed a mix finely chopped hazelnuts (done in food processor) and soft dark brown sugar in the centre. I enclosed the nut and sugar mix with the dough and worked it in until it spread consistently into the dough. And I was left with cookie dough. I rolled them out and baked for 18-20 minutes and was left with some lovely hard little biscuits. The kind you might serve in a saucer at the side of a cup of coffee. Yum.

Finally, some graphics.

My birthday celebrations continued, and yesterday a picnic was taken to the Greater Manchester Museum of Transport. I took some roasted vegetables, some ful medames from a can which I had seasoned insufficiently and this:



I found some arame seaweed in the cupboard which I soaked in water. I then simmered tofu in the soakwater with added salt, vinegar and soy sauce until most of the stock had gone. Draining the rest off, I stirred in the seaweed. It wasn't the most amazing tasting thing I have ever made, but at least it wasn't the only thing I had to eat.

My elderflower champagne is now ready, and quite a bit more potent than the bottle I was given by Jo for my birthday. It tastes a lot dryer too. I think it's because I put too much yeast into it (One teaspoon for two litres of water. Possibly even two teaspoons!). You can even see a yeasty sediment at the bottom. I added the yeasts because the natural yeasts in the blossoms did not seem to be powerful enough to kick start the bubbling process. With my first batch I thought the water I added was too hot, thus killing off the yeast, so with my second batch, I made thoroughly sure that the water was blood heat, doing all but testing it with my elbow. Still no action. I have added a subtle one teaspoon yeast to 4 litres of water for my second batch and hope this will be less dry and sedimenty. Here it is:



And finally to my first attempt at a custard-based ice cream. I had wanted to make White Chocolate ice cream, possibly streaked through with raspberries. But I shopped in a rush and found no white chocolate. I opted for 70% cocoa dark instead.

Flaws:
- I didn't constantly stir the custard when thickening it because I was busy breaking up the chocolate. I think this caused tiny tiny lumps. Happily, it did not affect the texture of the ice cream.
- Perhaps this was because I used too much chocolate! You may think there's no such thing, but I really should have used a dark chocolate recipe rather than substituting the white for the dark. This did affect the texture I think, it was a little less smooth than it could have been. And too chocolatey if that is indeed possible.
- I heated up fresh cherry pieces with minimal water and a bit of sugar. I let this cool completely before adding to the ice-cream. The syrup seemed to melt the ice-cream a tad, so I anxiously started my stir and freeze process to rescue it
- I tried to balance the excessive chocolate out with the 100ml remaining cream I had and didn't stir it in properly. You will see bits in the picture if you look closely.

Fortunately, it tastes all right and there are fans of the ice cream in the house as the following will testify to: