This morning i read Red Current's blog. She has been making cupcakes and cream puffs, yummo! So, seeing as i do this sort of thing for a living, off i went to work this morning armed with my camera. I work in a cafe and make all the baked goods such as muffins, cupcakes, loaf cakes, cookies and scones etc. Today i made muffins and cupcakes.
Muffins
I think i got this recipe from Nigella Lawson's 'How to be a Domestic Goddess', and i've probably changed it a bit over time too.
- 150g unsalted butter
- 400g plain flour
- 1tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 4tsp baking powder
- 150g sugar
- a pinch of salt
- 200ml milk
- 200g natural yoghurt
- 2 eggs
First of all, sieve the dry ingredients. Then, melt the butter in a pan and whisk together with the eggs, milk and yoghurt.
Mix the dry mix and wet mix together and add your flavouring (I made three different flavours today, blueberry, white choc chip and mixed berry and banana).
Spoon into your tins. As you can see, i've used squares of baking parchment instead of paper cups. The mix will make around 8 large muffins. Place in the oven at 180 degrees celcius and bake for about 30 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the middle comes out clean.
Remove from the tins and place on a wire rack to cool. Enjoy!
For banana muffins i omit 150ml of milk and add 6 pureed bananas. This mix is a lot wetter and gives you a few extra muffins.
Cupcakes
- 5 eggs
- 5oz sugar
- 5oz self raising flour
- 2oz cocoa
For the cupcakes i use my fabulous Kitchenaid mixer (sorry, didn't get a picture today).
Put the eggs and sugar into the mixer and whisk on full speed until light and fluffy. Sieve the flour and cocoa together and fold into the egg/sugar mix. Spoon into the paper cases and bake for approximately 15 minutes or until a knife inserted into the centre comes out clean. Place on a wire rack to cool.
You can decorate these in many ways. For these i sieved icing sugar into a bowl and added a little water, making sure the mix wasn't too runny, then added some food colouring. I spooned this onto the top. I then mixed up a smaller batch in a different colour and piped it onto the cakes in squiggles then i topped them with jelly beans.
More baking tips next week!
