Tag Archives: baking

Stem Ginger and Dark Chocolate muffins

50 minutes from thought to eating. If you were organized you could probably do it in 30 but I am just not that quick! It finally rained today so now the weather is back to normal, we needed muffins for tea! I have reduced the butter and increased the milk in this recipe by a little as I am trying to cut down on butter.

From a recipe by Diana Bonaparte in Mad about Muffins my favourite muffin book! Loads of other wonderful recipes in here, including B’s all time favourite, mint choc chip muffins and many, many more!

Preheat oven to 170 C Fan. Find muffin tin with 12 compartments, find muffin cases, find the rest of the ingredients and off you go…..

The wet stuff: two parts to this:

110 grams unsalted butter
100 grams dark chocolate

Melt 100 grams of dark chocolate and 11o grams of unsalted butter in a pan or the microwave on a low heat just enough that the butter melts and stir until smooth.

In the meantime mix up in a separate bowl:

1 egg
100 grams plain yoghurt – (I used homemade)
160 grams skimmed milk

Then add the butter-chocolate mix to the egg mix, or the other way round, just make sure the chocolate isn’t too hot or you will end up with scrambled eggy bits.

Whizz 2 nuggets of stem ginger, the sort that comes in syrup in a jar, in a food processor, or chop finely and add to the wet mix as above.

The dry stuff:

260 grams of plain flour (all purpose)
200 grams light brown muscovado sugar (sieved to get rid of the lumps)
10 grams ground ginger
1 and a half tsp of bicarbonate of soda
a pinch of salt

Sieve these together and mix well in another bowl. You now have one bowl of dry and one bowl of wet ingredients

Filling and topping – weigh these out before you mix the wet and the dry together!

150 grams dark chocolate, chopped up roughly or use choc chips
one more nugget of stem ginger finely sliced into 12 slivers

OK, all set! You should have one bowl of wet stuff, one of dry stuff, one little bowl with more chocolate bits in it and a saucer with some slices of ginger.

Fold the dry mix into the wet mix, work quickly, don’t beat it, just mix it enough that the flour has just disappeared, more like folding than beating. The batter can look quite lumpy which is fine! Then quickly fold in the second lot of chocolate bits. Spoon the batter into the paper cases. Put a sliver of stem ginger on top of each one and bake for 20 – 25 minutes. Mine took 25 minutes because I think I made a bit more mixture than I meant to and so the muffins were quite big! They are done when they are well risen and spring back a little when you press them.

Cool on a wire rack but don’t wait too long to eat them, in fact invite someone round for a cuppa and then you can eat two while you are talking to them and no one will notice!

For an easy to print version of this post click here

How much do I love this bread? – Nils’ 60/40 ryebread

A lot! Thank you Nils and Ye Olde Breade Blogge for this wonderful formula! When in doubt make this one….it always behaves beautifully and boosts your rye bread making confidence. It’s more rye than the light deli rye but not as seriously rye as some. Nils calls it ‘ze 60/40 rye’. A great introduction to rye breads for people who want to try their hand at making it, but aren’t quite sure where to start…

I use half and half light and dark rye usually to approximate the German rye flour that Nils uses. Sometimes I make the starter with the light rye and add the dark rye to the dough or vice versa. It works very well :)

Extra pic for Blue: Here is the dough fully proved and turned out from its form and slashed, it was quite firm enough to hold its shape at this point in time, didn’t spread out or anything….

‘Barleycorn’ bread and pizza light

‘Barleycorn bread’

I made a loaf yesterday using Doves barleycorn flour which I had bought out of curiosity. I would quite like to buy all the bread mixes available on the shelves of my local supermarket and try them just to see what they are like, but I resist usually.

I didn’t use the recipe on the back of the packet but made the loaf using the following:

250g mature white starter
1/4 tsp fresh yeast
500 g barleycorn flour
1 tsp spray malt
275 grams water
1 and a half tsp salt
20 grams melted butter

The finished loaf tasted slightly malty and was quite soft, and for my taste a bit boring and bland, I think I will add some whey or yoghurt to it when I use up the other half of the bag and maybe make rolls with it. I don’t think I would buy it again as I prefer to mix my own flours and seeds. I also prefer it when the grains and seeds have been soaked before mixing into the dough. Here as the flakes and linseed are already in the flour you don’t have the opportunity to do that and when you slice the bread you can see the little dry bits of cut grain or flakes or whatever it is.
I’ve just been back to read the list of ingredients.

No idea what the last line means. Does it mean there is Ascorbic Acid (Vit C) plus something else? The mouth feel is definitely soft, like it has a fair bit of malt flour in it. Reminds me of a shop loaf somehow even with a white leaven starter. Not a bad shop loaf, but still a shop loaf.

Doves Barleycorn Flour