chocolate rum-raisin muffins

We're just a mere 3 weeks away from Christmas - what does everyone have planned? I'm reasonably organised this year, Christmas cards are being written (some have even made it through the postal system!), most presents have been bought and only a handful still to shop for, you can say that Christmas this year is in a reasonably good place for a change. This week I might even tackle our new Christmas tree and well, the Christmas baking has already started with this rather boozy special - chocolate rum-raisin muffins!

The recipe I used comes from The Golden Book of Chocolate. The recipe didn't actually specify the type of rum to use, usually it would be a dark rum for baking but in the absence of dark rum and a bit of Bacardi left over, I figured it should work out ok.

Had to take a snap of these cute cupcake liners found at the local supermarket - very pretty!

Plump 150g raisins in 90mL rum in a small bowl for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Line a 12 cup muffin pan. In a large bowl, mix together 375g plain flour, 75g cocoa powder, 2 tsp baking powder, and 1/4 tsp salt. Stir in 200g caster sugar. Stir in the raisin mixture, original recipe asks for 375mL cream (but I substituted this with 200mL buttermillk and the remainder in soy milk), 2 lightly beaten eggs and 90g melted butter. Stir until combined.

Spoon the batter into the prepared cups.

Bake until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean, approximately 20 minutes.

Cool the muffins on wire racks.

These muffins had a quite a dense texture (which I'd attribute to the soy milk) and were delectably chocolatey but at the same time, not all that sweet. As a special treat, there's just that hint of rum taste to it  which I think I'd prefer over using a dark rum which can often be a bit too overpowering. Who knew you could use Bacardi Rum for baking!