Wednesday 11 August 2010

white chocolate & berry muffins

I'm constantly on the lookout for new foodie mags and I kid you not, I get addicted to each new foodie mag that I find. There's been months where I haven't been able to control myself and bought every single foodie mag that was out that month. Fortunately, I've managed to exercise some self control and have cut  back on the ones I buy (after thoroughly going through each one of course) and only buying the ones with new recipes which I don't have. And well, if you follow all the foodie mags, you'll tend to find that a lot of the mags publish a lot of the same recipes, albeit with a little tweak here and there so it does help me cull down the ones that I do/don't buy. Gradually I'm getting better and picking the ones with the new recipes but let me just say, the temptation to buy all those mags is there!

I've adapted this recipe from Australian Appetite's 'Chocolate Indulgence'. I've rewritten it slightly as I found the steps happening out of order and also substituted the 1/2 cup buttermilk and 1/2 cup skim milk with 1 cup full cream milk. Oh and all the reduced fat ingredients have been replaced with the naughty full fat ones. The original recipe also has the berries added at the start with the dry mix which I thought would colour the mix a bit too much. And yes, I have made white chocolate and berry muffins more than the once now and you'll know for sure the day that I have my own cafe, you will see this one on the menu!

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. In a bowl, combine 1 cup full cream milk, 1/3 cup melted butter, 1 tsp vanilla essence and 2 large eggs. Fold into the mix 2 cups self raising flour, 1/2 cup oats, 1/2 cup raw sugar, 1 tsp baking powder, 3/4 tsp cinnamon and 1/2 cup white chocolate bits.

Add to the mix 1 1/2 cups mixed berries. Gently fold through to combine.

Divide the mix into 18 lined muffin tray holes and bake for about 25 minutes.


In case you're curious, at the moment I'm using this brand of self raising flour. It's a bit more expensive than homebrand (which I am nervous about using after discovering some insects in a bag I bought recently) and yet cheaper than your premium brands like White Wings.

After 25 minutes, lovely golden coloured muffins!

Remove muffins from trays and cool on a rack.

My main learnings from this recipe was that you can replace buttermilk with normal milk. The recipe will work the same way and I personally through these muffins were fabulous. They had just the right amount of sweetness saved me a trip to the supermarket to buy a carton of buttermilk which I'd probably end up wasting half of. 

It's strange how this recipe makes 18 muffins. Anyway if you're planning to use this recipe, you might consider halving the ingredients to make a slightly smaller batch. I'm just stubborn and always follow recipes to the letter (that's just me though and well, I guess it's always better following the recipe exactly on the first go).

3 comments:

mashi said...

These muffins look fantastic, love berries.

Agreed, buttermilk and normal milk is interchangable.
No need to always follow the recipe super closely (well I don't anyways hehe)

Rita (mademoiselle délicieuse) said...

I think I've read somewhere about being able to substitute buttermilk with some milk and some yoghurt to give it some tang like buttermilk has. Can't remember the proportions though!

panda said...

mashi - i think i naturally default to recipes with berries in them! and yes agree, no need to follow the recipe too closely :)

mademoiselle delicieuse - if you do end up remembering the proportions do let me know. in the meantime i will give it a go the next time i come across buttermilk in a recipe!