Maltesers Muffins

I woke up on friday and decided randomly to bake Maltesers muffins. Had found the recipe from Yochana's Cake Delight some time ago while I was looking for new molten chocolate cake recipes after my meek attempt with A failed when the cakes wouldn't unmold from the ramekins.

Went shopping for ingredients I lack before baking and spent around $22 on cake flour, Hershey's semi-sweetened chocolate chips for baking, 7 packets of Maltesers, baking soda (I didn't find it in my fridge although I believed I had it cos it's needed for banana cakes, only to find that it had shifted to one of the kitchen cabinets._.) and vanilla essence. Tweaked the recipe slightly, as I used semi sweetened choc chips instead of dark chocolate.

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Malteser Muffins

Ingredients:

130 gm. cake flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. Bicarbonate of soda
60 gm. butter
110 gm. sugar (I cut it down to 100g)
60 gm. dark chocolate - melted (Used semi sweetened choc chips)
2 large eggs (70 gm. each with shell)
a pinch of salt (Didn't add as my butter was salted)
120 ml. fresh milk or buttermilk (note: buttermilk can be found in Jason's/coldstorage, dairy farmers brand)
1/2 tsp. of vanilla essence
1 cup of maltesers (Used 280g instead of original 250g, cos the Maltesers were sold in packs of 40g)

Method:

(1) Line muffin pan with paper cups.
(2) Sift cake flour with baking powder and bicarbonate of soda.
(3) Cream butter and sugar until light. (note: add vanilla essence)
(4) Add in melted chocolate and eggs.
(5) Fold in sifted flour and salt alternately with milk.
(6) Fold in maltesers lightly and scoop mixture into prepared paper cups.
(7) Bake at 175 degC for about 25 mins.

This makes about 10 muffins, depending on size of ramekins.

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I hadn't understand how to cream butter and sugar, so went googling for it.

Creaming butter
Step1: Soften butter sticks by having them stand at room temperature (or between 65 and 70 degrees Farenheit) for a few hours.

Step2: Unwrap the sticks. Cut the butter into small, manageable one-inch long portions and place them in a heavy, cool mixing bowl.

Step3: Put some sugar into the bowl.

Step4: Attach beaters to a hand mixer.

Step5: Set your mixer to its lowest speed and mix the butter and sugar until no clumps remain. Turn your mixer to medium speed and continue to mix for about two minutes while regularly scraping off beater buildup with a rubber spatula.

Step6: Continue to add small amounts of sugar at a time and keep mixing.

Step7: Mix for about ten minutes. Pause periodically to scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl for unblended sugar.

Step8: Blend until the desired fluffiness and smoothness is achieved. Check for ridges, as they signify that air pockets are present in the mixture and that creaming has been successfully completed.

Step9: Use your creamed butter immediately or store it in a refrigerator for future use.

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This version is the more comprehensive one, and one which I could use the normal mixer for. But as I was creaming the butter, it was a very dubious process cos my mixer bowl was huge and there was only 60g of butter, so it was difficult to "check for ridges" and judge "fluffiness". And my chocolate refused to melt properly.



The batter left after I filled up the ramekins and sent my first batch of muffin batter into the oven.



Muffins, freshly out of the oven. There's a small hole in the leftmost muffin cos I plucked out the malteser chocolate to try=p. It tasted sticky, chewy and slight burnt :). I baked for more than 25 minutes, about 30-35 minutes cos when I stuck toothpicks into the muffins, there was still some sticky substance on them.



My oven KO-ed while my 2nd batch of muffins were still inside! Sadd. My poor oven which had baked butter cakes, banana cakes, fruit cakes, cheesecakes, raisin cakes, walnut cakes, marble cakes, cookies over the short span of 2-3years. The timer sprang back to zero and refused to get started up again.

The muffins had already risen and were 90% done, so transferred them to the normal oven, and the top of the muffins got burnt cos the temperature couldn't be controlled :(. So had to cut off the burnt tips of the maltesers.

My mum liked the muffin very much:). Gave away the 4 presentable ones to 4 friends and they enjoyed too:). One said it was too sweet, one said the bottom tasted like fa gao. My dear siblings, nephew and niece shared the unpresentable ones and loved them:D.

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Yay. I want to bake more:).

But school reopens tmr! Sobb. My silly school didn't follow the footsteps of the other uni which had declared tmr as a school holiday.