Cranberry and White Chocolate Muffins

So, I end the year as I began - messing around with white chocolate! I've learned my lesson though and this recipe just calls for chunks of white chocolate and nothing more complicated.... It also uses up those cranberries hanging around after Christmas (use fresh or frozen ones defrosted).

So, you will need:
100g unsalted butter
284ml soured cream (a standard tub)
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
280g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
200g caster sugar (golden if you have it)
150g fresh cranberries (blueberries would also work well)
150g white chocolate, chopped into small chunks

1. Preheat oven to 190c/170c fan/gas 5. Line a 12-hole muffin/large cupcake tin with cases.
2. Melt the butter (in the microwave is fine), leave to cool back down a bit, then mix in the soured cream. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix again, very thoroughly.
3. Mix dry ingredients (flour, baking powder and sugar) together and sift into the butter mixture. Combine well.
4. Add cranberries and white chocolate chunks. Combine thoroughly. The mixture will be quite stiff, this is quite normal!
5. Fill cases - pretty full. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until skewer pulls out clean when poked into your cake.

I read somewhere that muffins are an excuse to eat cake for breakfast. Hurrah for that!

Melting chocolate in the microwave

Thank you Tessa - I love you!!
I didn't quite believe it could work and only because I trust my good friend Tessa with my life did I dare to try it....
Pretty much any chocolate (oddly) in any amount - 4 minutes at 40%. Perfect. Even when you include butter too; even white chocolate, although it still then misbehaves on contact with butter (see earlier ramblings).
All that faffing about with bain maries is SO OVER.

Easter bunnies

I'm getting ready for the Easter bake off!

I've bought a mountain of chocolate (to add to some gratefully received supplies from Mum) and bags full of fair trade mini eggs (I've now ditched Cadbury's in favour of Traidcraft). I'm still not happy about the white chocolate - baking with it always seems to throw up new problems (see earlier ramblings on Death by white chocolate). I can always recover it (adding milk to split white chocolate and whisking really does work every time), but I wish it wouldn't be so darned difficult in the first place.

I also have a wedding anniversary order to fulfil Sunday morning (let's hope I don't interrupt the celebrating couple!). At least that includes some Lemon Lovehearts cupcakes so I'll have a bit of a break from chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate...

Death by white chocolate: Episode II

Well, Green & Blacks made no difference at all. In fact it split from the butter in the melting stage and was only rescued with some very vigorous whisking (a drop of milk really helped to save this mix). So, tasty and organic it may be, but a solution to the problems of baking with white chocolate it is not.

I've put the goal of a gluten free white chocolate cupcake on hold for now and have started from scratch with a standard white chocolate sponge. This seems to have worked out ok - hurrah! Just as well, as I've had an order being collected this morning...

The recipe is: 125g caster sugar mixed into 125g soft butter, add two eggs and mix until light and fluffy; add 150g well-sieved plain flour and 2 tsp baking powder, plus about 70g grated white chocolate. Leave to sit in the cupcake cups for 20 mins or so before bunging in the oven at 180c for 25 mins (or until golden brown on top). This makes 12 'normal size' cupcakes or about 8 'power' cupcakes! (ie made in a muffin tin, as pictured.)

Death by white chocolate

This weekend I’ll be trying to resolve my current issues with white chocolate cupcakes. I’m advertising these already for Easter, so I’d better make the recipe work somehow!

Essentially I’m adapting a gluten-free chocolate brownie recipe, that I’ve already successfully converted to chocolate cupcakes, but my recent attempts to replicate this in white chocolate was disastrous (although still delicious, said our very polite guests). There was pouf where there shouldn’t have been pouf, and uncooked almond squish in the middle – yuk! In my opinion the only thing it had going for it was the topping.

Anyway, I think I know where it all went wrong, so for round 2 I will be experimenting to find out if Green & Blacks white chocolate, with its minimum 30% cocoa solids, makes a difference to the mix. Already I can report that Tesco white chocolate is much nicer than Sainsbury’s (who’d have thought it) and made a yummy white chocolate topping. Green & Blacks tastes very different to me – it contains real vanilla and tastes, well, of vanilla! So, even if it works in texture it maybe won’t taste of white chocolate. Oh what to do?

If anyone has any top tips for perfect white chocolate cupcakes, please let me know…