Sunday, August 2, 2009

Good Things Come In Mini Packages

I keep forgetting I only have mini muffin tins in my stash of baking utensils, and so sometimes I get to the point of greasing the pan to follow a standard muffin or cupcake pan & then I realise I have to take a risk in terms of baking time and serving displays.

The latest risk that paid off involved olive oil, pecans and no electric beaters (yeah!) from the Australian cook book "a cook's book of decadence: Chocolate Coffee Caramel" -

Preheat the oven to 210 degrees Celcius. Lightly grease 9 holes of a 12-hole standard muffin tin (I managed to fill 34 mini muffin holes) Sift 215g self-raising flour and 1 tsp baking powder into a bowl. Add 50-5g caster sugar and 60g finely chopped pecans (for those who hate chopping, you can use a mortar & pestle and beat the heck out of the pecans but watch out for flying bits) Make a well in the centre of the bowl. Combine 1 tbsp instant coffee powder with 1 tbsp of boiling water. Add to flour mixture with 1 egg, 185ml milk and 80ml oil (I reckon there is room for creativity here; I used a medium grassy Italian extra virgin olive oil but macademia oil would probably work well too) Stir until just combined. Meanwhile, make a streusel topping by rubbing 30gm butter into 30gm self-raising flour. Add 2 tbsp soft brown sugar, 1 tsp ground cinnamon & 2 tbsp chopped pecans and mix until combined. Divide the mixture among the holes. Sprinkle with the streusel topping and bake for 10-12 minutes, or until golden brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

The mini muffins were polished off at my birthday morning tea (my workplace tradition is that the birthday celebrant brings in his or her own sweets for the group). They were so popular that when I offered a colleague either a homemade cake or my group contribution toward a birthday gift, the colleague actually thought seriously about the offer and said that he would have to think very carefully about it LOL

1 comment: