Pear & Toffee Muffins

We had a team night out last night to watch two of our colleagues in a production of 'Acorn Antiques'. We decided to arrive early to allow us to indulge in some tea and cake. Myself and another of my colleagues offered to bake. I had seen this recipe a few weeks ago when I had some pears to use up and decided they would be pretty easy to whip up yesterday when I was short of time.

This is a recipe I found on the BBC Good Food website that you can find here. The recipe makes 12 muffins.

Ingredients:

300g self-raising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
85g golden caster sugar
250ml milk
2 eggs (beaten)
100g butter (melted)
2 ripe pears (peeled and cut into small chunks)
100g soft toffees (chopped into pieces - I didn't have enough so used some fudge pieces as well)
25g flaked almonds

Method: 
1. Heat your oven to 200C/Fan 180C/Gas 6. Line a 12-hole deep muffin tin with paper cases.
2. Tip the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and pinch of salt into a large bowl, then stir in the sugar.

3. Mix together the milk, eggs and melted butter in a large jug and pour into the dry mix all at once, along with the pears and a third of the toffee pieces. Stir until just combined (your batter should still be lumpy and have some streaks of flour.)

4. Divide the mixture between the cases, then sprinkle with the remaining toffee and flaked almonds.

5. Bake for 25-30 minutes until the muffins are risen, golden and feel firm when pressed (the toffee will be hot so be careful!)

6. Remove from the tin and allow to cool on a wire rack.

Blueberry Muffin Loaf

Today was the baptism of the son of one of my best friends - the extremely cute Ellis. Knowing my love of baking my friend Rachael asked if I would make a cake for after the service. It was the perfect opportunity to try something new. I had some blueberries that needed using up so I decided to try out this recipe for Jo Wheatley's blueberry muffin loaf. This is a lovely, moist, fruity cake with the added bonus of a crumble topping. Jo recommends serving it warm for brunch but I think it would go down well at any time of day. The recipe comes from 'A Passion for Baking' but you can find it online here.

You will need a greased 2lb loaf tin, with the base and ends lined with a strip of buttered baking parchment.

Ingredients:

Topping
25g plain flour
20g unsalted butter (cubed)
20g caster sugar

Muffin
200g self-raising flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
75g soft brown sugar
50g caster sugar
70g unsalted butter (melted)
160ml full-fat milk (I used 1% fat and it didn't seem to make any difference)
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
130g blueberries

Method:
1) Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.
2) Begin by making the crumble topping. Tip the flour, butter and sugar into a bowl and using your fingertips rub the butter into the flour until it looks like a crumble mixture.

3) Then move onto the loaf. Sieve the flour and bicarbonate soda into a bowl, add both the sugars and mix well.

4) Melt the butter, leave to cool slightly and then mix with the egg, milk and vanilla extract. Whisk the mixture until smooth.

5) Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and pour in the milk and egg mixture. Using a large metal spoon, fold the two mixtures together until only just combined.

6) Fold the blueberries into the mixture (make sure you don't overwork the mixture as otherwise you will get a heavy sponge).

7) Carefully spoon the mixture into your prepared loaf tin and scatter over the crumble topping. Bake on the middle shelf of your oven for about 1 hour or until golden, well risen and a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean (mine took 50 minutes).

8) Enjoy warm or at room temperature.