My brother in law, from Rohan’s side, wanted Muffins for his birthday. I asked which flavor. He said any. I was stuck between 6 options. So I made all 6! It’s good to be on the safer side when you are playing with people’s love for cakes you know. Specially when last Saturday he had a baby boy! Bad time to screw up in a sweet birthday as such.
A great guy, an ex-sailor who now runs his own maritime company and a wonderful guitarist who shares the same interest as my husband, I ate the strawberry one in this batch when the box I chose to take them could accommodate only 5. Yes, that explains the case of the missing muffin 🙂
For its liner, I did a DIY bakery style brown paper liner and it took me only 5 minutes to do all 6. All you need to do is cut squares, press them down in your muffin tin with a can or glass that fits the muffin cups and press the naturally formed paper folds tightly. There is one thing though, maintain the overlaps. You can choose not to, but if you do, it’ll look great.
There is a great tutorial here for DIY Bakery Style Muffin Liners, from Sarah @ A Beach Cottage (A place where she blogs about her Australian beach house, beach decor, lifestyle and recipes) if you wish to see! I follow her religiously and learnt my liner here. I cut the edges in a scallop though!
Now, the recipes.
For the basic vanilla cake mixture, you can follow this recipe- my staple go to. Never failed
Here goes the recipe!
All purpose flour: 1 cup
Baking powder: 1 teaspoon
Sugar: 3/4th of a cup
Butter: 2/3 rd of a cup
Eggs: 2, large
Vanilla Extract: 1 teaspoon
Cold water: 2 tbsp
Procedure
Cream butter and sugar, until light and fluffy. Dunk in two eggs, beat again and add vanilla.
In another bowl, sift baking powder and flour.
Mix the dry ingredients to the wet, mixing a bit at a time to avoid lumps.
Add cold water and give it a final whisk.
Line a muffin tin with cupcake liners and spoon in the batter. Remember to spoon in only till half to two thirds as you’ll need to keep room for it to rise.
In a preheated oven (That’s been preheated in 325) bake your cupcakes for 10-12 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
Flavors
Divide your batter into 5 portions and mix. The ratio given below is for one muffin each:
Coffee and caramel: For coffee and caramel, Heat 1 teaspoon butter with 2 teaspoon sugar. When the sides start browning, lower the heat and add 5 tbsp of full cream milk. Keep stirring till it thickens and gets a light brown caramel color. Cool.
To muffin batter, add caramel and instant coffee (1/2 tsp)
Pure chocolate: Add a spoonful of good quality cocoa powder and top with chocolate hundreds and thousands
Srilankan Cinnamon: Add 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and crushed almonds to batter. Garnish with whole toasted almonds
The heart of pineapple: Fill your muffin cup with half batter. Place a spoonful of pineapple jam in the center. Top off with batter.
Keylime and Apple vodka: Mix 1/2 teaspoon of keylime juice and 1 teaspoon apple vodka. You can either mix it with batter or follow the heart of pineapple method.
Give away with love and tears 😛
Likey mikey?
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