Monday, April 26, 2010

Cappuccino Muffins

I am a sucker for caffeine!! I can't imagine starting my morning without my HUGE mug of coffee and am quite fussy about my cuppa. I find the smell of coffee extremely irresistible and it finds its way into my cakes and desserts quite often. I had never baked muffins with butter or coffee earlier. When I saw this recipe on Deeba's blog, the combo sounded so damn, damn irresistible. You bet I visit PAB ever so frequently to drool over Deeba's utterly gorgeous cakes and bakes. I want to bake every cake on her blog and these Cappuccino Muffins called out to me real loud:-).

 I have mostly baked my cakes and cupcakes with oil and I am not all that confident when there is butter in a recipe. The 'creaming' to a fluffy stage scares me. This recipe thankfully did not call for creaming the butter. Thought it would be a good start for trying butter for baking. Here goes the recipe.

Ingredients:
2 cups self raising flour (I used 2 cups plain flour plus 3 teaspoons baking powder)
3/4 cup vanilla caster sugar (or plain caster sugar and 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract)
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons instant coffee powder
1/2 cup butter
1 egg
1 small bag chocolate chips (100g)
Method:
Preheat the oven onto 375º F / 180ºC.
Melt the butter in a small saucepan and leave to cool. In a large mixing bowl, combine flour and sugar.
Crack the egg into a medium sized bowl and add the milk and coffee granules and stir until the coffee is dissolved. Pour this coffee mixture onto the flour/sugar and add the melted butter.
Stir until just combined. Fold in the chocolate chips. Fill the muffin cases with the mixture, do not over-fill, you want the cases to be about 2/3 full.
Bake for 15-20 minutes, until springy to the touch. Cool in the tin for about 5 minutes before putting the muffins onto a wire rack to cool.

I had only about 3/4 cup of chocolate chips, so I also used 1/4 cup chopped white chocolate. I baked a small batch of muffins they tasted wonderful, fresh out of the oven. I did not make any topping for the muffins. By the time I pre-heated the oven and measured out all the ingredients there was a power cut, and power played hide and seek with me for quite some time!! Thankfully I had not yet mixed the ingredients.

By the time the first batch of muffins went into the oven, it was quite late and I did not want to take any more chances baking more batches. So the rest of the batter went into a loaf tin. The cake in the loaf did not taste as good or light as the muffins. Am not sure if I took the loaf out a few minutes too soon or generally a muffin recipe is not really suited for cakes.  Have to find an excuse to bake the delicious muffins again to figure this out:-)) In the meantime, tips on baking with butter and muffin science most welcome!!



This post is also my entry to Champa's Bake Off event.

20 comments:

M D said...

Wow Suma! Ur muffins looks springy and soft. Nice pic too. I'm facing the same trouble with power as u do. It's giving me baking nightmares! Esp when all's done and it goes in over to bake! I had a flat banana bread with power cut yesterday :( boo-boo-boo... :(

Your Muffins seem to be so well done. Nice colors too. I am not a coffee lover and have a coffee packet lying from past a year! Nice idea to use them in muffins.

Nachiketa said...

That's cool... u got amazing muffins despite the power cuts n all.... awesome.... Love coffee too :)

Had tried a variation of these... posted at Cappuccino Buttermilk Muffins ~ Coffee Mania and they too were from Deeba's....

Cheers,
The Variable, Crazy Over Desserts - Nachiketa
Catch me on facebook @ Crazy Over Desserts

s said...

I absolutely love coffee desserts and this looks great. superb texture ...great pic

Padhu Sankar said...

Muffins look fabulous!!
http://padhuskitchen.blogspot.com/

SathyaSridhar said...

Woooow!!!! Suma,,muffins looks great n fluffy spongy..came out in perfect texture dear..

Indian food recipes said...

wow!!!muffins luk perfect n delicious!

Sushma Mallya said...

Hi Suma, thanks for dropping by & for leaving your lovely comment, Muffins looks delicious, love coffee flavour..

Suma Rowjee said...

@MD- Sorry about ur banana bread, feel so sad when these things happen.
MD and Nachiketa- I keep my cooker on standby when I bake cakes in tins which fit into the cooker:-)

Veggie Hut said...

sounds delicious..

Priya Suresh said...

Cute and gorgeous muffins..yumm!

Sneha said...

Maaan!! I feel you on so many fronts
- power cuts really know how to ruin it for everyone it seems!
- I LOVEEEEEEEEEEE coffee. Coffee as a hot drink, coffee as a cold drink, coffee in ice cream, coffee in cakes.... just gimme that coffe!! :0P
But since I am breastfeeding my 3 month old son, I try to keep it to a min. I may just let this one slip by!! :0PP

Your muffins look lovelyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, btw!! Can't wait to try them out!! :0)

Champa said...

I love coffee too. Muffins look yummy. Thanks for the entry. Could you please add a link to my announcement please? Yes, do send some entries every week. I would very much like that.

Deepthi Shankar said...

wow this is like heaven .. looks gorgeous

TREAT AND TRICK said...

Looks great, coffee is my favorite too...

Deeba PAB said...

They look utterly delightful Suma. Thanks for trying them out. Glad we share the love of coffee! Thanks too for the mention. *Blush*... you are very sweet!!

Deepti Pawar said...

I can feel my teeth sink into these babies now! Yummmmmm....

Cool Lassi(e) said...

Saw it in the Bake-Off event entry and made a beeline to this post.What an awesome looking muffin it is! I have fallen in love with your space just because it has this recipe. Well yes, the picture in the profile(chocolate cake??) is looking good as well. Certainly will be make this very soon. Following you.

Unknown said...

Hello Mrs.Suma,

I have tried out this recipe in the afternoon and every single one of them is finished. They came out beautifully and tasted good. Looking forward to making it again soon. Also thank you for the clarification that cupcake batter wouldnt turn out fine when baked in a loaf tin. Had this doubt for long and its finally cleared.

Regards,
Indrani

Unknown said...

Wow spongy soft muffins...Came here from veg bowl nice blog u have here :)

paulami said...

hi im a new visitor and found this recipe very tempting and therefore i tried!!! my doubt is there was some batter left after filling my 12 muffins tray and so i had to finish this batch an refill once done which meant the extra batter had to wait 20 mins! now where have i read that you should bake the cake as soon as you mix. Even though leftover batter muffins tasted fine but im still curious, was it meant to be that way?