In the Mood for Muffins

I've been having bitten by the cupcake bug and they are all I can think about lately, food wise that is. I trawled the web for recipes, discovering new blogs along the way:)And I found myself going back to the yummy CupcakeBlog by Chockylit. All those delicious cupcakes... where on earth should I start? A classic chocolate? Oh yes, but let's jazz it up by adding matcha (green tea) icing! Using the Adzuki Bean Paste Filled Chocolate Cupcakes with Matcha Green Tea Frosting recipe, I omitted the adzuki bean (red bean) paste. I couldn't stand the stuff as a child and I still dislike it now.

I really liked the cupcakes and I loved the green matcha contrast against the dark chocolate. I haven't made icing in years and I think I added a little too much matcha but otherwise it was yummy .. and different. However, my cupcake excitement was severely dampened when I offered the little cakes around at work. I think the expressions I encountered most was .. "disgusting". Disgusting colour, disgusting flavour. I must admit I was rather taken aback. In the past the chocolate cake, chocolate cookies, banana cake ... have always gone down well. Ok, I admit matcha is an unusual flavour ... but still ... the comments were rather harsh and perhaps even uncalled for.

However, it seems I still have a bit of a cupcake fever left. I made toffee apple muffins using a Gordon Ramsey recipe, which I found on Times Online. So totally easy to make and pretty darn delicious. As much as I find Gordon Ramsey's TV shows entertaining, I've always balked at attempting one of his recipes. I'm a huge Nigel Slater fan... which probably says something about what I think of the Ramsey cooking style. Don't get me wrong ... I would love to go to one of his restaurants but my cooking style is a tad bit different. I did love these cupcakes though. They were so light.

Toffee Apple Muffins
Adapted from a Gordon Ramsey recipe found on Times Online, published on 3 November 2007

Recipe makes 10 large muffins

350g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp ground cinnamon
100g caster sugar
140g soft dark brown sugar
2 large cooking apples, peeled, cored and finely chopped
3 large eggs, beaten
120ml vegetable oil
100ml milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
50g soft toffees, chopped into small pieces

• Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4 and line a 6-hole muffin tray with paper cases. Sift the flour, baking powder and cinnamon into a large bowl and stir in the sugar. Make a well in the dry ingredients.
• Add the chopped apples, eggs, oil, vanilla extract and milk in the middle of the well, and fold the mixture together with a large metal spoon, using as few strokes as possible. Don’t worry if the mixture is lumpy, the trick behind the lightest muffins is not to overwork the batter.
• Half-fill the paper cases with the mixture, then sprinkle over the chopped toffee pieces. Cover the toffee with the remaining batter, then bake for 25-30 minutes or until the muffins are well risen and golden.
  
  
  
  
  
  As usual I changed bits of the recipe - the above is what I changed it to. For example, the original recipe actually called for all spice but I only had cinnamon; dessert apples but I bought cooking apples by mistake, which I found lends a refreshing tang to the muffins; golden caster sugar but I used normal white and slightly more than half soft dark brown sugar - mainly because I prefer the stronger caramel tones of dark brown sugar. I think the recipe is a keeper and I definitely won't be sharing any of these at work tomorrow! Ha... what can I say? I'm still feeling sore :)