The Baking Medic

Banana Chocolate Chunk Muffins with Crumb Topping

Let me start out by saying these muffins are amazing! Sorry — no modesty on this one.  These are without a doubt the best banana muffins/cake/bread/whatever I have ever made.   I always have problems with banana bread – it’s too gooey in the centre but burnt on the outside.  Baking these as little wee muffins solves that issue and they’re done in 20 minutes! And the texture is perfect — not too cakey but not dry or gooey.

Now, what else sets these muffins apart? For a start, they are crammed full of big chocolate chunks — delicious cold but even better slightly warm and melted.  Secondly, they have a strong sweet banana flavour.  I added a dash of banana extract and it really strengthened the intensity of the banana.  Nom.  Lastly, just before baking a crumb topping of brown sugar, flour and butter is sprinkled on top.  It is a sheer delight to bite through the crispy sweet topping before sinking your teeth into the soft banana and chocolate muffin that waits beneath.  I could go on and on about these muffins.

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Enter the White Chocolate Coconut Muffin

So I think this is my 3rd variation of that brilliant original buttermilk muffin recipe — and it has yet to fail me! That being said, these muffins turned out slightly differently from how I expected them too.  At first I wanted them to be lemon white chocolate coconut muffins, but alas, Aldi was shut for Easter! So they became White Chocolate Coconut muffins.

As ever, I am a big fan of using up ingredients (waste not, want not) so the coconut and white chocolate were both left over from my Cookie Monster cupcakes.  When I was buying ingredients for them, I waaay overestimated the amount of googly eyes I would need! So I had 2 packs of white chocolate buttons left, just waiting to be thrown into some tasty muffins.

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I’ve had a craving for my favourite brownie recipe recently — an almost overpowering desire to sink my teeth into a fudgy moist square of chocolate heaven.  But this blog is all about discovering new recipes so I didn’t want to just make the same old brownies, as delicious as they are.  So I decided to turn them into Rocky Road brownies, by adding a gooey topping of toasted marshmallows, peanuts and mini milk chocolate chips.

I must say that these brownies are very fudgey.  Since it was an experiment, I was unsure about how long I should bake the brownies before adding the topping.  The problem is that once the topping is on they have to go back into the oven.  Put the marshmallows on too soon and you’ll either burn the topping or have a gooey centre.  Put them on too late you could be left with dry, burnt edges.  So, knowing that brownies taste good even if really gooey I erred on the side of caution and perhaps underbaked these brownies a little bit.

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me want cookies!

These cupcakes were so much fun to make! I first saw them a few weeks ago on Facebook.  I thought they looked spectacular and immediately wanted to make some of my own.  So I set about looking for the perfect way to recreate these Cookie Monsters. :)

Firstly, I needed to make them look “fuzzy”.  I opted to use dyed coconut instead of dyed coarse sugar for two reasons.  Firstly, coconut is a lot easier to obtain in St Andrews and secondly, these cupcakes have a generous amount of icing and are topped off with chocolate buttons and a chocolate chip cookie.  I don’t really think they needed the extra sugar. :P

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Variation #2: Bakewell Muffins

Freedom! Well, freedom-ish.  I just had my midsemester exam yesterday… but that’s all I’m going to say about that. However, since my Easter break saw me working harder than I do in term time, I decided to take today off and play a round of golf.  It was a blustery day, but the sun was out and I was happy to be doing anything other than revision. And my best score yet!

This is the second variation on the original Pear & White Chocolate Muffins.  The first variation was the Jaffa Muffins, in which I substituted the pear and white chocolate chips for orange zest and chocolate chips.  In this variation, I experimented a bit more and replaced 1/2 cup of flour with a 1/2 cup of ground almonds.  I also added a dollop of jam in the centre. I’m sure you’ve guessed what the varation is (if the title of the post didn’t give it away anyway) — they’re Bakewell muffins!

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I seem to be baking a lot recently! But when I get stressed, I bake. And well, the exam’s tomorrow, so baking is a relatively short and productive revision break. Although, I must say it’s not terribly wonderful for my, ahem, waistline. :P O well.

I made this because on Thursday evening, my other half, B, had some Couchsurfers staying with him! We had a wonderful meal together and talked about everything under the sun from how to properly pronounce “Salford” in the Manchurian accent to driving down dirt tracks in rural Mexico.  They were just starting another several month tour of the UK, Europe and Asia before heading home to Australia.  Talk about living the dream!

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These muffins are the first variation on the muffin recipe that I posted earlier this week, the Pear & White Chocolate Chip Muffins.  The recipe once again uses oil instead of butter, comes together so quickly and gives you delicious muffins with generous muffintop (the best part!).

These muffins are Jaffa Muffins! If you don’t know what Jaffa cakes are, you’re missing out.  They’re a UK cookie/cake covered with a layer of orange jelly and topped off by a coating of chocolate.  Whether or not they’re a cake or a biscuit is a source of great debate, but these are without a doubt muffins. :)

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Pear + White Chocolate = Delicious Muffins

It’s the Easter break here in St Andrews and most students are off cavorting away somewhere on the Continent. Alas, for medics, the 2 week break finds us at home or still in the Bubble looking longingly outside as we get our first days of spring.  Such is the lot of people who have midterms the first day back from the “break”.

But I still found some time to make these muffins.  A few months back, I made a Glazed Pear & White Chocolate Bundt cake.  I loved the combination of pear and white chocolate, two soft sweet complementary flavours.  So this past weekend, I was running low on a few ingredients and was looking for a recipe to use up a couple of pears that I had sitting around.  See I was butter-less, which pretty much rules out 75% of cake and cookie recipes.  So I decided to go looking for a muffin recipe and I found a great basic buttermilk muffin recipe.  The recipe originally called for berries, but I substituted the same volume of chopped up pear and white chocolate chips.

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