Sunday, 7 June 2009

raspberry & white chocolate muffins

A couple of posts back, I mentioned that there would be a little 'project' in the works and what better time to make a start on it when it's the long weekend! Just to bring everyone up to speed, my project will be to cook my way through Allan Campion & Michele Curtis' 'In the Kitchen'; a collection of 'more than 1000 recipes for every day'. It'll probably take me a little while to get through this book but I figured it would be a great way to put myself back in the kitchen, learn a few new recipes and well, I guess have a bit of fun!

Allan Campion & Michelle Curtis have previously published 'Everyday in the Kitchen' which was a Winner at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards for Best Easy Recipes. I suppose that was what attracted me to them in the first place. I love simple recipes that I can cook everyday. I'm sure there are others out there like me who own a sizeable collection of cookbooks but really, there's only a handful that you'll use to cook out of on a daily basis. When I went through the ones I had, Campion & Curtis automatically jumped out at me as a good fit for this project.

1st recipe out of the book - Raspberry & white chocolate muffins.
True to its word, this batter gave me 10 muffins and cooked nicely with 20 minutes in the oven.
The taste test - the muffin tops were crunchy, the inside moist and the raspberry and white chocolate flavours were well balanced. I had mum agreeing with me - these muffins were neither sweet nor too bland, they were just perfectly right!
The recipe actually suggests a sprinkling of icing sugar to serve - personally I think it can do without but icing sugar does make everything look pretty! Well, maybe if I was giving them away... There's only 10 in this batch which probably won't last very long :P

Excited as I was to start this project (coupled with J having his exam meaning I was at home for the day), I decided to try a second recipe. Can you guess what else I made in the above pic?

I promise there'll be savoury recipes to follow. Just that I do have a personal preference/attraction to sweets and those recipes always seem to come first. 

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yum! Raspberry and white chocolate is one of my favourite combinations ever :) I can see the 10 not lasting very long ;)

panda said...

whoever came up with white chocolate & raspberry as a combo is a genius! already down to 4 now!

Bean Sprout's Cafe said...

wow.. I love muffin ! I think u also made the M&M cookies? haha

The book sounds interesting..I will have a look at book store.. (actually have so many cook book that never read yet)

Stephcookie said...

They look fabulous and sound just how you would expect a great muffin with that crunchy top and moist inside :) White chocolate and raspberries just go together perfectly don't they?

panda said...

bean sprout - yep! i made M&M cookies :P i actually found the book at basement books in central - $39.95 (RRP $69.95). if you have a look at the recipes, they're really easy to follow and well written.

steph - muffins definitely need to have a crunchy top! sometimes i'm tempted to slice the top off and just eat that :D and yep, it's ingenious whoever discovered the combo of white chocolate raspberry; the tartness of the raspberry somehow balances out the sweetness of white chocolate!