Saturday 24 September 2011

Chocolate chip muffins, two varieties

I made these simple, yet tasty, cupcakes for a friend's birthday, and they went down very well with everyone so thought I would share them with any readers of this blog. I made them all in one go, and so the instructions will assume you are doing the same, though if you want to make just one type then just don't split the cake mixture.

  • Preheat the oven to gas mark 4.
  • Take 8 oz. Stork, (or any type of softened butter, but if you can get hold of some Stork I would highly recommend it, I always use it if I can for baking), and cream together with 8 oz. caster sugar. Keep going until the mixture becomes quite pale. The more you do now, the tastier the cakes will be.
  • In a separate bowl or jug beat 4 eggs. Add to the mixture, and beat well.
  • Add 8 oz. self raising flour and fold in gradually. 
  • Add chocolate chips and mix in well. It's up to you how many chocolate chips you add but use enough to make sure you won't get some muffins without any in. 
  • Use half of this mixture to fill six muffin cases in a muffin tin.
  • Melt some of your chocolate of choice (to do this heat some water in a pan, and place a bowl/jug/mug over the water and stir until melted. Do not put the chocolate straight into the pan, it will burn). Add the chocolate (I used three rows in a large bar of Cadbury's) to the cake mix and stir in until it's no longer streaky. You can also use cocoa powder at this stage if you would rather not melt chocolate.
  • Add the remaining mixture to the six empty muffin cases and bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes, turning the muffin tray half way through in order to get a more even bake.
You should now have something that looks mildly like this:


To make the icing:
  • Cream softened butter, and then add at least twice as much icing sugar (you will want the consistency to be rather stiff to start with as you will be adding liquid). Cream together until combined.
  • Split the mixture in half. To one add peppermint flavouring (how much you use is dependent on personal taste, but a small cap full should be plenty). Add a small amount of green food colouring.
  • Once the cakes are cooled, spread onto the chocolate cakes (or use an icing bag to pipe it on if you want them to look extra fancy) and sprinkle with chocolate sprinkles.
  • With the other half of the buttercream icing, mix in some more melted chocolate. Spread onto the white cakes and finish off with some white chocolate drops.

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