Muffin Love

Do you remember me mentioning that I’d baked a whole heap of muffins?  Well me being both busy and scatty of late, I just haven’t got around to showing you my efforts so here you are:

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I don’t see myself as a good cook, I’d lose too many marks on presentation and sometimes that seems to be most important thing especially when you think of fashionable trends like American-style cupcakes and macarons.  I don’t make those kind of things, I like simple and filling and satisfying (which isn’t always a very photogenic version of food either).  Brownies and muffins and falafel are on my list.  And pasta of course, plenty of pasta.  I don’t cook to impress, I cook and bake because I enjoy it and because I enjoy sharing that (first) enjoyment with other people.  Food is a good way to show your love.

So as I’ve found some amazing people who’ve been helping me out of all kind of difficulties, I decided to repay the favour and what better way is there than by whipping up six dozen muffins?!

It sounds a lot but I have a lot of favours on my conscience and once you discover more than one mixing bowl in your cupboard it gets a whole load easier.  You just need a system.  (I think I need to apply that theory to more than just one other area of my life unfortunately).  So plenty of mixing bowls and spoons and a good idea of what you’re doing and how you’d like to get there.

Four flavours, two double batches and two single batches.  Chocolate chip, chocolate and dried berries, fruit (I use one of those inexpensive frozen berry mixes straight from the freezer) and then the sticky toffee with the dulce de leche surprise (yep, I’m always surprised by what I find lurking in my cupboards and fridge too).  Mmm.

I don’t have a lot of space in my kitchen so first of all I needed to clear the work surfaces and then throw in some creativity, you’d be surprised how much I can stack and tier things when baking!  We don’t have a dining table so as the muffins started coming out of the oven I realised that I needed some extra space to cool them.  Fortunately we’d just been given a full-sized ironing board as a present, et voilà!  Muffin cooling space.

I always add at least vanilla extract to my baking as it gives it a bit more flavour, bland cakes get so boring, but I also combine it with either almond or lemon too if there’s not a lot of punchy flavour in the mix.  I think I’m also going to inveigle my way to an extra muffin tray as I’ve only the one and therefore had to use some bun trays with the muffin papers balanced precariously in the slots.

There were no disasters to report other than the fact that I forget to put enough egg in the first double batch, it’s a maths thing again despite the fact that I’d even got my husband to write the correct amounts on a post-it note for me!  Fortunately they passed a taste test (cook’s perk) so I seemed to have got away with it.

The only downside to baking this many muffins is the amount of washing up that you get left with!

The recipes were all taken or adapted from this book

Background and inspiration for recipe cards taken from here.