1st Sesion with Baking Buddy: Blueberry Muffins and Chocolate Chiffon Cake

Earlier this August, I received a surprise e-mail from one of my readers, Stephanie. She came to know about my blog through Edith and had read up my post on finding a baking buddy. After some exchange of mails and sharing of our interests and experiences, we met up shortly and began to pass each other our bakes. 

We had wanted to indulge in a baking session together but somehow our schedules never quite matched. So, last friday was the perfect opportunity to realise the plan.

There wasn't much of a plan to start with. I only knew that I wanted to do blueberry orange muffins. After browsing through some books, we decided we would do a chocolate chiffon cake as well.

For the same amount of time we took to prepare the blueberry orange muffins and the chocolate chiffon cake, I would only have been able to bake one of the items. Everytime I bake, there is always tons of preparations waiting for me to carry out. Washing of equipment and pans.Weighing the ingredients. Melting chocolate. Lining the baking pan. Separation of eggs. The list goes on....  I am quite slow-paced and completing these tasks can take me about 30 minutes to 1 hour. With a baking buddy around, all these tasks seemed effortless. 

All went smoothly and it was the perfect note to end our first baking session. The flavour of the chiffon cake was well delivered, thanks to the magic of Valrhona cocoa. One thing that needs to be improved on though would be the mixing of the ingredients. Kevin Chai asked for dark chocolate to be melted with milk but the two do not blend together smoothly, resulting in dark streaks in the mixture and chocolate soil-like particles in the final product. After reading Bee Bee's post on her dark chocolate chiffon cake, I figure that I will avoid this the next time by mixing the oil and the melted chocolate together instead. Will be posting the recipe next time when I have made adjustnents.

It has been more than a year since I attempted making any muffins using the dry and wet method. I was'nt satisfied with the texture of my previous baked muffins. It seemed that they turned dense quickly upon cooling, losing that soft and fluffy appeal. Since then, that poor impression stucked with me for quite a while, until Anncoo's blueberry orange muffins recipe caught my attention.

The muffins turned out cakey with a buttery fragrance, almost as if creamed butter had been used (no butter was used). It was a pity the blueberries tasted quite bland. Nevertheless, the combination of yoghurt, olive oil and orange zests made up for it and contributed their share to the flavour. What I liked best was that the muffins retained their tenderness upon cooling. This is a clear indication that the recipe is a keeper.

That pretty much sums up my first baking session with my buddy. It was fun and refreshing! Definitely look forward to having another bake therapy and churning out more bakes with her.

Blueberry Orange Muffins:

Recipe from Anncoo Journal

Bakes from A New Friend - Muffins

Remember I mentioned a blog visitor of mine who emailed me in my french apple tart post? My new found friend, Stephanie, kindly passed me some homemade muffins the day before. The muffins were very nicely wrapped up in see-through plastic wrappers sealed with thin golden foil strips. I was touched by her efforts and sincerity. In return, I passed her some banana chocolate cakes I have made that day, which however, was contained in a non-fancy plastic food saver obtained from SKP.

Naturally, the muffins became my choice of breakfast the next day. In case you are wondering, the muffins I received are Chocolate Matcha and Vanilla Cranberry. These tiny cakelets are lovely - soft,  fluffy and slightly moist, not a tad oily and with the right level of sweetness. The vanilla cranberry muffins had a nice buttery aroma and the cranberries were juicy to the bite, making me wonder if they were dried fruits or the real McCoy. I love how the matcha and chocolate flavours combined to give a grassy, rich bodied cocoa taste. This unique combo definitely hit the right notes for me.

Stephanie, if you should start blogging about your bakes, these cakey muffins definitely deserved to be featured at the earliest opportunity. Thank you for these mouth-watering treats, my friend =]

Sultana Chocolate Chip Muffins

Whew! It had been a busy period for me during Xmas and New Year. This post should have came up much earlier.

I wasnt satisfied with my maiden attempt on muffin baking. It turned out slightly stiff and kueh like in texture. The taste was bland and the muffin stucked to the paper liners. I guess i slightly overmixed the batter. The ideal batter should be lumpy while i tried to break up the lumps.

On my second attempt, the muffins did not turned out good either. The batter was very watery which i though was because i had added too much orange juice.

With some perseverance, i managed to get decent muffins on my 3rd attempt. This time round i mixed the liquid and dry ingredients until they were just nicely combined. The muffins came out to be soft, fluffy and kueh-like. Hmm... I wonder if authentic muffins are supposed to be like this.

After having done some reading on muffins, my understanding is that there is generally 2 kinds of muffins. One is by using melted butter while the other is by the creaming butter method. The muffins derived from these two methods are totally different in texture. Muffins yielded by the previous method would be slightly kueh-like while the latter kind of muffins are more cake-like. The muffins that i attempted belongs to the first category. In my opinion, muffins done by the creaming butter method are no different from cupcakes. In actual fact, i feel that majority of muffins you find in stores are fluffy and cake-like. Tastewise, i think that cake-like muffins seem to be more agreeable with my palate.

The original recipe that i followed called for blueberries. Thinking that fresh blueberries would not be so easily available in supermarkets, i substituted them with sultanas and choc chips that i had in hand. The amount of sugar used in this recipe is on the low side hence the resulting taste of the muffin is light. This is compensated by the sweetness and aroma of the sultanas and chocolate chips.