Sunday 7 February 2010

white chocolate & mixed berry crumble muffins

I think if I were to ever run out of food at my house, I would still have a tray of muffins sitting at attention, ready to be eaten. Yes, I do like baking muffins - they're quick to bake, I seem to almost always have the ingredients at home for a batch and the great thing is that you can bake up so many different combos. Pretty much, whenever I have time, I'll be baking muffins. You can count on it.

This recipe was from Ravinder Bhogal's 'Cook in Boots'. Here recipe was for white chocolate and blueberry - I figured it would be the same if I did white chocolate & mixed berry.
The recipe starts off by making the crumble mixture - combine 50g plain flour, 65g caster sugar, 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon and 25g unsalted butter; simply rub till the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Warning - Don't be like me and forget to add the crumble mixture to the batter once it's spooned into the cases!
The muffin batter - Sift 450g plain flour and 2 1/2 tsp baking powder into a bowl and then stir in 175g caster sugar and 1/2 tsp sea salt. Add zest of 1/2 lemon, 200g chopped white chocolate, then pour in 50ml melted unsalted butter, 350ml milk and 1 beaten large egg. Mix till combined and don't forget to add the berries.
In a preheated oven at 190 degrees, the muffins will take about 25 minutes to cook.
Recipe makes 16 fat muffins.
I was quite intrigued by this recipe and how it turned out. It probably wasn't the best muffin I'd made and to be honest, I was surprised that this muffin didn't turn out sweeter. The last recipe I used by Miss Bhogal was very sweet and in a way, I was expecting this recipe to lean towards being overly sweet but good. The quantities also produce a very strange number of muffins (16 fat ones - and I'm quoting the recipe here) and well, that's a lot of muffins to eat when it's just me and my mum who eat them at home. On the plus side, I'd say this was a healthier muffin compared to the ones I usually make and well, I do love baking muffins!

7 comments:

Lorraine @ Not Quite Nigella said...

Good to know and thanks for being honest about them! :D I love crumble topping and usually eat the tops off with the crumble :P

OohLookBel said...

White chocolate and berry is the ultimate muffin combination but they are sometimes quite sweet. I wonder why this recipe is different? Hope you are getting through them, though :o)

Maria@TheGourmetChallenge said...

Ohh they looks really good, especially the crumbly top!

Rita (mademoiselle délicieuse) said...

Crumble topping is always a welcome textural contrast. I find the sweetness level always a bit iffy when trying a recipe for the first time and how funny about the number of muffins the recipe produces!

panda said...

nqn - actually, i recently bought a muffin top pan! i think a crumble muffin top sounds like a good idea :P

belle - i think it was cause there wasn't much sugar in the batter. but agree, white chocolate and any sort of berry seems to go well. another combo i like is green tea and white chocolate:)

maria - thanks! actually, i nearly forgot to put the crumble top on. had to take the pan out of the oven and sprinkle them on at the last minute.

mademoiselle delicieuse - i try to reduce the amount of butter in crumble toppings, the amount of butter can sometimes put me off. and well, i'm still boggled why a recipe would make 16 muffins - such an oddball quantity!

Justin said...

i just wrote something about white chocolate in another comment, and then i saw this. sounds yummy.

panda said...

justin - this recipe was yummy! not too sweet, just right!