Tuesday 7 July 2009

flourless chocolate muffins

Last week, I went a little crazy and started marking with post-its all the recipes I wanted to cook from 'In The Kitchen'. Well the plan is to cook my way through the book but then there's ones which I want to cook first and these were the ones I was putting post-it notes against. By the time I was done, I ended up with a book with post-it notes coming out of all sides and I sort of thought to myself, I haven't really achieved a whole lot.

As crazy as it seems though, there is a method to the madness. I go through the book, pick out the recipes which really interest me and the next time I'm at the supermarket or fruit market, I'm on the alert for ingredients that are on special and then cook the respective recipe with that ingredient. It worked out this weekend when I found chocolate blocks on special and decided to cook the flourless chocolate muffins.

Melting the butter and chocolate.
Whipping the egg whites to firm peaks.
To the chocolate mixture, add egg yolks, almond meal plus caster sugar. Fold in the whipped egg white.
Into the muffin liners.
Bake for about 30-35 minutes and you get these nicely puffed up muffins with the cracked tops.
It actually came as a bit of surprise to me that these muffins rose so much. Every other flourless cake/baked product I've seen baked by others or baked commercially seems to collapse in on itself. I actually brought these over for dinner at a friend's and even my friend A was querying me whether it was actually flourless and whether I'd put any raising agents in it. The answer is no and if anything, it would be the fact that I folded in the egg whites slowly and didn't collapse any of the air bubbles so when baked, they looked just like normal muffins (but of course with the cracked tops).

So this brings it to Recipe #5 and so far, so good!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Delicious! And yes it is surprising that they haven't sunken as most flourless cakes do. Hehe you should see my books, they have post its all over them :P

Stephcookie said...

They look great! Love the look of those crackly tops, reminds me brownies :)

Bean Sprout's Cafe said...

yeah, looks so good and similar as brownie.. how it taste like? it looks light and crisp on top.. should be super good when it just came out from the oven.

panda said...

nqn - must be first time lucky, hopefully it'll work out the same the next time i make them. lol, at least it shows that you use your cookbooks. i have to shamefully admit that i've bought so many cookbooks which i haven't got round to cooking out of!

steph - thanks! actually, you're quite right - they look and almost taste like brownies :)

bean sprout - now that you mention it, they actually do taste like brownies. slightly chewy on the inside and nice & crisp on the top. and yep, they were the best straight out of the oven! otherwise, microwaving them for 15 seconds was good too :P

Two fit and fun gals said...

hello dear can you email me ? So i can get your addy?? :)

i will have to try these out, my boyfriend can't have much flour in his diet, and these look gorgeous!!

xx

bettypham20@gmail.com

panda said...

betty - i've just emailed you the recipe (from my gmail address). good luck with it and look forward to reading about it on your blog!