Triple Chocolate Muffins

Muffins really have become my favourite way to bake over the last few years. Cake in less than thirty minutes? Yes, please!

And it's only really been in the last couple of years that I've done them from scratch. When a packet mix is $5 at the supermarket, and 12 muffins doesn't go very far between 6 kids after school, then finding a cheaper alternative is necessary.

But finding a good chocolate muffin has eluded me during that time. I found plenty of recipes that needed buttermilk, or lots of eggs, or ingredients that I just couldn't stretch to including, but the perfect basic chocolate muffin wasn't amongst them.

The more I've baked, the more I've learnt about baking. So I'm getting braver about trying my own recipes. And when someone says "I've been waiting for you to make the old muffins again" then it's a winner, right?!

makes 18 ~ ¼ cup muffins

Ingredients 

1 ½ cups self raising flour

½ cup cocoa powder

1 cup brown sugar

125g butter, melted

1 egg

1 cup milk

½ packet dark choc chips

½ packet white choc chips

Method 

* place flour, cocoa and sugar in bowl, whisk together

* add choc chips to flour

* add egg, milk and butter to bowl, stir gently

* scoop into greased muffin trays

* bake 20min 180°C

Have you got a favourite flavour muffin? 

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and Calm to Conniption, The Annoyed Thyroid and The Geeky Shopaholic for The Ultimate Rabbit Hole

8 tips to bring out your baking best

Another mum at school said to me yesterday "I know you're a super-baker" (in the context of the conversation, she was snappy, but we both misinterpreted each other, so I ignored that bit). As I listened to her recount her story about why she's a terrible baker (she isn't, it's just the story she tells herself), I realised that there's lots of things you can do when you're baking that can impact the final result. So I thought I might share some tips for getting it right each time.

White Chocolate Cranberry Muffins

I love flavour combinations that you wouldn't normally think of. I stumbled on blending white chocolate with cranberry about 18 months ago, when Sophie was starting to eat more foods. I grabbed some craisins (dried cranberries) out of the cupboard, and threw a few white chocolate drops into the bag as we were racing out the door for a play date. She ate the white chocolate first, but as I snagged some from under her nose, I was hooked. 

Turns out it wasn't an unknown combination to the world at large, but I guess because we don't grow cranberries in Australia, it wasn't a very common one at the time. I've often converted my chocolate chip cookie recipe to a white chocolate cranberry cookie, but now that we're making lots of muffins for lunch box snacks, I set out to find a muffin version. And can I just say "YUM!" The whole batch of these are gone. Except for one fussy girl child who said "I don't like them cold", everyone has loved these muffins. They've now been added to the regular muffin-recipe-rotation.

Ingredients

60g butter, softened

1/2 cup caster sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 cup milk

1 egg

1tsp vanilla extract

2 cups self raising flour

1 cup craisins (or cranberries if you can get them)

1 cup white chocolate bits

Method

* cream butter and sugars together

* add egg, milk and vanilla, mix well

* add flour, cranberries and chocolate, stir gently until just mixed

* spoon into muffin pans

* bake 180°C 20 min, or golden brown

Don't burn yourself when you eat them fresh from the oven!

Linking up with Kidgredients for What kids Eat

Taco Scrolls

Ever since I discovered Lucy's recipe for ham & cheese scrolls, I've been a little bit obsessed with scrolls. They're a quick easy lunch I can whip up on weekends, and they store well for lunches. Except Natalie and Riley refuse to eat hot food cold, and Douglas doesn't really like scrolls. At least Steve and I have plenty of food for lunches (Sophie generally eats a bite of everything in sight.)

Last weekend as I was cooking some taco meat up for Douglas (he was cooking jacket potatoes for dinner), I wondered what taco scrolls would be like. I had previously made cheeseburger scrolls with 2 ingredient yoghurt dough, but they were only good eating fresh from the oven, so I wasn't sure of my chances with this recipe.

Everyone loves this recipe. Well, not Riley, because he's fussy; but both Nat and Douglas are taking some for school today, and Steve has eaten the other half of the batch at work. I think it's a successful recipe when they're fighting over who gets to take the last ones.

My recipe is slightly different to Lucy's, because I like a stiffer dough to work with [not at all because I added too much milk], but even when the dough is wet, it still bakes up nicely, it's just a pain to roll (and sticks to everything!)

Ingredients

2.5 cups self raising flour

40g butter, at room temperature

1 cup milk

250g leftover taco meat

cheese

Method

* rub butter into flour until it resembles bread crumbs

* add milk, stir with a knife

* tip out onto well floured surface and knead until it pulls together

* roll out into rectangle shape, approx 2cm/1" thick

* spread meat over dough, leaving approx 2cm/1" clear along one edge

* sprinkle cheese over meat

* starting on the edge opposite the clear edge, start rolling

* once rolled, cut into 2cm/1" slices

* place on lined baking tray

* bake 180°C 25-30min, or golden brown on the bottom

can be frozen - once cooled, wrap in alfoil. Reheat in microwave.

linking up with Kidgredients for What Kids Eat

Classic Blueberry Muffins

Growing up in a small country town in the 80's in Australia wasn't very exciting. Food was usually meat and potatoes, or a sausage in bread, and the usual treats from the bakery or canteen were a snot block [vanilla slice], or a donut.

So when we moved to the city, and shops sold these things called muffins, it seemed like a whole new world had opened up (not to mention the fish and chip shop down the road from mum and dad's office - we spent a fortune there every day after school!)

Anyway, back to muffins. I've always been a lover of chocolate. Vanilla just seems dull to me, but chocolate is exciting, and can be consumed so many different ways.

But blueberries changed my world.

Fruit. In a cake. And it wasn't apple pie.

From then on, whenever I could choose a muffin, I chose blueberry.

The taste of the fresh vanilla cake. The little pop as you bite into the blueberry.

And it goes perfectly with a hot cup of tea.

But baking them at home has always been a dismal failure. Until recently.

Budget restraints, and something that just tastes a bit too "off" has seen me searching out muffin recipes to bake from scratch.

And I think I have absolutely nailed these blueberry muffins.

Give them a try, tell me if you think I've nailed it.

Ingredients

2 & 1/2 cup self raising flour (or all purpose/plain flour, and add 1Tbs baking powder)

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 cup milk

1 egg

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1tsp vanilla extract

1 cup blueberries (I used frozen, fresh will work, too)

Method 

* combine flour and sugar in bowl

* add egg, oil, milk, vanilla, mix gently

* fold in blueberries

* spoon into greased or lined muffin trays

* bake 180°C for 20min, or golden brown on top

best eaten warm, can be frozen.

linking up with What Kids Eat at KidGredients

my number one lunch box tip

Chloe is in year 12 this year. And before she started school, she attended daycare while I was studying at university. So I've been packing lunch boxes for about 15 years. I don't profess to know everything about packing lunch boxes, but my number one tip is this - don't pack new foods, just pack foods you know they'll eat, at least in the beginning.

Trust me, if you looked in my kids' lunch boxes some days, you'd be horrified by the number of packages, and lack of *good* foods in there. But, except for one minor incident involving cold mac&cheese, lunch boxes regularly come home empty.

When kids start school, they want to take it all in. If they're like Riley, they get distracted by everything around them; and Natalie is a talker with her friends. So giving them foods that they can eat quickly, and will fill their tummies for their busy day, will see empty lunch boxes coming home, and you'll know that they're getting their energy requirements to see them through the day.

What should you pack in lunch boxes?

Five items is what I've found best to pack in lunch boxes. Fruit, sandwich, dairy, crackers, biscuit.

Fruit is a must. Our school encourages "snack attack" for the preppies, a mid-morning fruit break.  Sliced fruit that is ready to eat is best - grapes, watermelon, orange segments, bananas, apples (try this method to keep it from going brown)

Dairy. [I don't push this one if they have cheese on sandwiches.] Try yoghurt (decant from a big container - I just discovered this nude food yoghurt cooler, so we'll be trying it out), or cheese and crackers for a change.

Sandwich. This is totally going to come down to what your kids eat - you could also call this "main component" My kids don't really like leftovers for lunches, and tend to stick to basic meats for sandwiches (although Douglas has spread out into leftovers and salad wraps in recent years)

Crackers and biscuits. Once again, depends on what your kids eat - at the start of the year, I bake a lot, so they pack baked goods instead of biscuits. And if they have cheese and crackers, then we don't pack a second lot of crackers.

Just remember - five items of foods they eat, and the lunch box will hopefully be empty every day.

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lunch box loving | pear, cardamom and choc chip muffins

Lunch boxes in this house are endlessly frustrating (as is breakfast, but that's another story), one day they like something, the next day they don't. These apple and sultana muffins were devoured when I first started making them, but now one doesn't like sultanas, the other doesn't like muffins, it does my head in!

So as I was laying in my sickbed yesterday, listening to Sophie sleeping beside me, I was wracking my brains (and the contents of my fridge) to see what I could come up with that would be loved by the fussy ones kids. Pear, cardamom & choc chip muffins is the winner!

Ingredients

• 2 cups self-raising flour
• 1.5 tsp cardamom
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup milk
• 90g margarine
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup choc chips
• 2 pears, peeled & grated

Method

• sift flour and cardamom
• add sugar, milk, margarine, pears and choc chips
• mix until well combined
• spoon into lined (or well-greased) muffin pans
• bake 180ºC for 20min

 I get 18 muffins from this mix, and the apple sultana recipe

In other news, I wrote a guest post over at Modern Mummy Mayhem today, please check it out!