Well, this weekend was quite a food-filled one, I made Dark Chocolate-Orange Muffins, Cinnamon Oatmeal Cookies, and I tasted a reallllly good cheesecake/brownie thing, and I discovered the greatest thing to snack on. All in just three days. This was one goood weekend, food/kitchen-wise.

The muffins, sadly, could have been better. Taste-wise they were really good; the orange flavour really strong, and the dark chocolate providing a rich but not too sweet foil to the zestiness. They were, however, a little tough, which I at first thought was because I'd mixed them too much, because I'd doubled the recipe to make enough for all the people my mother had "pre-allocated" them to, but then, when I made another half-batch, being careful to not overmix them, they were still tough. sigh. i don't know why. they taste good if you microwave them, though.

The chocolate bits inside get all nice and melty, and yummy. Or, if you don't have a microwave (or are too lazy to put them on a plate that you will have to wash, and walk down one floor and up again), you can blast them with a hairdryer. It works, really!

So, I guess, overall they weren't a complete failure.


The next thing I did were Cinammon Oatmeal Cookies, whilst waiting for the football match to start. These were a bigger success, although it really didn't seem so at first. The recipe called for coconut and oatmeal, but I didn't want coconutty cookies, so I omitted them, which I didn't think would be an issue. Then, the recipe said to drop rounded teaspoons on the sheet, but they expanded to a huuuge size, then flattened to wafer-thinness. I thought it might be because the lack of coconut might have made the dough too thin, so I added two tablespoons more of flour, and reduced the size of the dough balls to half a teaspoon. They didnt get so big (duh), but they were still quite thin, and they were a tad too sweet yesterday night. but today, they taste really good. buttery and chewy, and fragrant with cinnamon and butter. yumm.


So, those were what I made this weekend. what I ate, though, will be another post, because I just have to move on to my work now. buggers.

Cherry Chocolate Muffins

Bought about 250g of cherries at Carrefour the other day whilst I was shopping for my lunch-ingredients, without even knowing what i was going to do with them. they just looked so gorgeous that i had to get them.




On the way home, I decided to make muffins with them, and decided to add dark chocolate to the mix. So I pitted and halved about 3/4 of them, and grated the rest into a pulp, and chopped up about 3/4 of a small bar of Cadbury's Old Gold Dark Chocolate—which was the only thing 7-11 had. the muffins came out well enough, even though they seemed too wet at first. When i broke the first one apart, I thought I was doomed never to make successful fruit cupcakes. However, after sitting for awhile, they became pretty damn good.

So good, in fact, that they were all gone by this morning—I made them last night. And so good that my mother called me to tell me she'd ordered cherries, and that I should get the rest of the ingredients needed for more cupcakes. haha. this from my mother, who doesn't even like cakes and stuff very much.

So for this batch, I added more sugar, since my mother complained that they weren't sweet enough, and quartered the cherries instead of halving them, since my mother said that there needed to be cherries in every bite, instead of a big chunk or three here and there and none elsewhere. Also added a few drops of almond essence, since I thought that that would complement the cherries and the chocolate. But, as I was leery of adding too much, I ended up putting too little, and the almond-y scent I'd been aiming for was pretty much nonexistent. But, all in all, am quite happy with these muffins: they're sweet and buttery, with a nice, springy texture, creamy and darkly sweet from the chocolate, juicy and tart from the cherries. the only thing is, the batter itself has no cherry flavour or fruitiness, despite the almost half a kilo of cherries i grated in. but, they are nice and moist. plus, the fruit chunks give them a really nice look.



Drizzled with dark chocolate on the top—yumm.

Chocolate-Hazelnut Chunk Muffins

Aand the muffin saga continues, with today's foray into chocolate-hazelnut studded muffins.



Aren't they pretty? okay, maybe not pretty per se, but they look pretty inviting. haha. i think it's just chocolate in general that has the ability to make everything look inviting/enticing.
So why chocolate-hazelnut chunk? basically because i bought a square of riter-sport milk chocolate hazelnut and didn't feel like eating it like that. it was actually a toss-up between daim-studded muffins and choc-hazelnut, but i figured those hard caramel pieces in daim wouldn't taste very good after being baked. so, chocolate hazelnut it was.

the muffin recipe is basically the same as the jam one, with some changes

Ingredients:
75g butter, melted
3/4 cup (plus a bit) milk
1 egg
1/4 tsp vanilla essence
1 1/4 cup self-raising flour
a bit less than 1/4 cup caster sugar (the smallest measurement my cup has is 1/4, but less than that, cos of the chocolate..somewhere between 1/8 and 1/4 cup)
1 slab of Riter-Sport Milk Chocolate and Hazelnut, room temperature

Preheat oven to 180°C.
-Cut up the chocolate into smallish chunks, and place aside.
-Whisk together milk, egg and vanilla essence.
-Sift SRFlour into bowl, and mix the sugar in, then make a well in the middle.
-Pour the melted butter and the milk mixture in and mix. Whilst still lumpy, add in the chocolate and continue to mix, but be careful not to overmix.
-Ladle into muffin tins, almost to the top, then bake until they rise and turn golden brown.
(I can't really give you very detailed/specific instructions for baking time, since i use a microwave oven, but it's pretty obvious when they're done).
-Remove and place onto cooling rack, drizzle with tempered chocolate if desired. (or if, unlike me, you have extra plain chocolate to melt)

i suggest eating one whilst it's still fresh from the oven, or toasting it when you want to eat it, because when the chocolate is all nice and melty, mmmmm-mmmm-good. haha.

yumm.

Surprise Muffins

My latest baking expedition has been to make these funky jam-filled muffins. Making them was pretty fun and easy too. got the recipe from here, and it's basically a prep, prep, prep, pour, mix to get the batter, then a dollop of batter, jam, and more batter. quick and easy in terms of making them, but I am less than pleased with the end result.

Even if they are pretty, they don't taste all that good, especially the day after, and the day after that. After they've cooled, they taste pretty good, springy, moist, fragrant and yummy, with a slight crispy shell on the outside. So, that night, I was pretty happy. Then, I ate one for breakfast the next day, and it was kind of a shock when i realised that the cake had somehow become a lot more dense and dry/oily overnight, not moist and all like the previous night. it wasn't horrid, but it definitely wasn't as good as it had been the night before. M seemed to like them though, so that's something. Then, i ate one for breakfast today, and it was like yesterday, but worse. sigh. tomorrow i'll try toasting them, see what happens.
Maybe i'll make them again, but substitute some of the butter out for water or milk. or maybe it's the microwaves—cooking from inside out instead of outside in. dunno. it'd be tragic if i had to stick to cookies ONLY. sometimes you just want to stir stuff together and chuck it in and get a nice end product, not cream, stir, roll, refrigerate, cut roll, refrigerate cut etc etc etc until you are so darn tired. ah well. maybe shall try another muffin recipe sometime soon. god knows i need the 'therapy' after staring at virtuallly METRES of microfilm for six and a half hours a day.