Well the snow set in yesterday, and it's still going, and apparently will be all week. So it felt like a good excuse to get some baking done. And an even better excuse for a Hot Toddy, it only seems appropriate to drink one when there's a coating of snow on the ground. I made mine with a cinnamon stick, orange peal studded with cloves, calvados, honey and hot tea.
With the Hot Toddy warming me up I started on a batch of savoury muffins.
The basic recipe I use is, 2 cups flour, salt, 150g butter, 3tsp baking powder, 1 cup milk, 1 large egg (makes 12). To this I add sweet or savoury ingredients (add sugar to the mix if you're making sweet muffins).
- Pre-heat the oven to 180°C
- Place dry ingredients in a bowl.
- Slowly melt the butter on the stove.
- Brush the muffin tin with some of the melted butter and dust with flour, knocking out the excess (if you're not going to butter your tin, reduce the amount of butter to 125g).
- Mix the milk in to the butter, then lightly beat the egg in.
- Put the filling ingredients in to the dry bowl. (I used corn, paprika, bacon, diced shallots, grated cheese, corn-meal (or instant polenta) and grated garlic(on a micro-plane).
- Beat the wet in to the dry ingredients adding more milk if needed.
- Divide mix in to the muffin tin.
- Bake for about 20 minutes, you can check easily by pressing down on a muffin and if it springs back it's likely to be done, Other wise stick a skewer in and if it comes out clean they're done.
Out of the oven and cooling for 10 minutes before tipping out and placing on a rack to cool.
Perfectly cooked and moist.
