No, according to DB and his work mates it’s a muff-cake. Debate has raged in our house lately over whether what I’ve been baking constitutes a muffin or a cupcake.
Last week I made lemon and yogurt muffins which were simply DELICIOUS. The recipe stated it would make 12 muffins. I stretched that out to 18 (for lunch boxes throughout the week). And thus started the debate.
You see, this recipe was very light – the combination of the lemon juice, yoghurt and the bi-carb soda made the mixture so fluffy it looked more like mousse than muffin batter. DB’s argument is that a muffin should be denser.
And it was missing what seems quite the critical component of a muffin – the muffin top (probably because I’d stretched the ingredients to make 18 instead of 12).
DB also told me he wouldn’t pay $4 for one of my muffins – they are just not big enough, not like the ones on sale at work.
Believe it or not this consumed a fair amount of the adult chatter in our house for a few days. I sent some in to work with DB to garner opinion. The term muff-cake was devised by DB, 2 Computer Scientists with PhDs, a Computer Programmer and a Software Engineer. I can’t argue with that.
To summarise, my muffins lacked:
- density
- a muffin top
- size
Enter the texas muffin pan which we purchased on Saturday afternoon and welcome the raspberry and white chocolate chip monstrous muffin.
Raspberry & White Chocolate Muffin
Where before I could get 18 muffins out of this batter, in order to get the size, density and muffin top, I made 6. Which you have to chop in half because one is too large to eat on its own. Go figure.
This is a recipe of my own, adapted from one that’s been used for so long I can’t remember where it came from. But it’s worth trying – big or small, they are delicious.
Ingredients
- 2 cups (300g) self-raising flour
- 2/3 cup (150g) caster sugar
- 3/4 cup (140g) white chocolate bits. I usually use more and cut down on the sugar
- 3/4 cup frozen raspberries (can be substituted for toasted macadamias)
- 60g butter, melted
- 3/4 cup (180ml) milk
- 1 egg, lightly beaten
Method
- Grease muffin pan (6 hole or 12 hole) and/or line with cups/baking paper
- Pre-heat oven to 160 – 180 degrees celsius
- Sift dry ingredients into a large bowl, stir in remaining ingredients
- Fold through frozen raspberries
- Spoon mixture into pan
- Bake in oven for 15 – 20 minutes for the normal size and 25 – 30 minutes for the enormous size
By the way, the 2 Computer Scientists with PhDs, Computer Programmer, Software Engineer and DB have deemed this monstrous muffin a mini-cake. Fair enough.
