A friend of mine has recently asked me if I have a really good recipe for easy made muffins, and the truth is that I have hesitated to offer a positive reply. Not that I haven’t made muffins millions of times, and not that they have not been tasty and great, yet when one imagines a muffin there is texture, there is softness and moisture, there are variety of tastes and there is most importantly the shape. This highly risen dome of a roundness that makes it obvious that this is truly nothing else but a muffin. Easy to say, but not quite so easy to do.
This weekend I have had the enormous pleasure of baby-sitting one of my youngest friends, my almost five year old god-child Mina. She is a pleasure and delight, music and dance, sweetness and mischief. She is fond of playing the piano, reading fairytale books, playing with jewellery and make-up, but most of all she is fond of sweets. And what a better way to entertain a little fire ball than promising her that she can be a kitchen princess and make her own muffins.
As an inspiration I have tried for a first time one of the muffin recipes of Nigella Lawson and now beyond any doubt I am convinced that this is the easiest and most successful recipe I have ever tired. Great texture, soft and moist inside, crisp and round from outside. The flavour is simply a matter of taste, I have used only left over ingredients readily available at home and as a result Mina and me ended up making two types of muffins, chocolate ones with white chocolate chips inside and vanilla and banana muffins. Asking her at the end which flavour did she like the most her answer was simple – I liked them both!
Ingredients
Makes 12 muffins
- 2 bananas (chopped in small pieces)
- 125g vegetable oil
- 225g raising flour
- 2 medium eggs
- 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 2 tbs cacao powder
- 100g white chocolate (chopped in small pieces)
- 1 package vanilla
- 100g Sugar
Method
- Whisk together the vanilla, sugar and eggs until the mixture becomes white and fluffy.
- Add the vegetable oil, the flour and the soda and mix until just incorporated.
- Divide the mixture in two. Adding the cacao powder and the white chocolate chips to one and the two bananas cut into small pieces in the other.
- Set paper cups into your muffin tray and carefully spoon in the two muffin mixtures into the cups.
- Pre-heat the oven to 180C. Set the muffin tray inside and bake for 30 minutes until golden brown.
