Cathy’s Kitchen: Lemon and Poppy Seed Muffins

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baking, Lemon and Poppy Seed Muffins, Muffins, Testing Recipes

Every couple of weeks I try out a new recipe from one of my Cook Books. Last Saturday I did my first attempt at Lemon and Poppy Seed Muffins, here are my notes:

Recipe Origin: Lemon and Poppy Seed Muffins from Scrumptious Muffins by Marc Grossman

Date baked: Saturday 1st July 2017 on a sunny afternoon whilst Orla napped after tiring her out at the Barrowford Lifestyle Festival in the morning.

Difficulty Level: There quite a few steps in mixing the ingredients in the right order, and a couple of extra ingredients that I didn’t expect like chopped up pear and Greek yogurt but each step was simple and the recipe was easy to follow. As you can see in the photo below, the kitchen did get messy!
Results: Beautiful, perfectly golden muffins. The pear pieces and yogurt made the muffins really moist and the lemon icing had a great tangy taste.

Who Ate them: I took eight with me to a friend’s house that afternoon as a housewarming gift. They in turn had baked brownies and scones to share with us so we had an afternoon of indulgent eating! I took the rest to my parents house the next day and we ate them after my Mum’s Sunday Roast.

Would I make them again? Absolutely! And I may have to do it soon, I have half a jar of poppy seed left over!

Cathy’s Kitchen: White Chocolate & Raspberry Muffins

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Marc Grossman, Muffins, Raspberry Muffin recipe, Scrumptious Muffins, White chocolate, White Chocolate and Raspberry Muffins

I have not baked muffins in ages; the last time I remember making some was when all my friends went off to Uni and I was left behind at home. I baked a batch of banana muffins and since my friends had left the county I shared them with their Mum’s as an ‘I miss them too’ gesture. But all my friends have long-since gotten their degrees and settled into jobs and in all that time I haven’t returned to muffin baking.

I am guessing that the muffin has been neglected in general as the more fancy looking cupcake has taken centre stage. But there is so much to love about muffins, that I have been missing them. They are good and chunky, less concerned with style and more substantial than a sparkling-icing-crowned cupcake. Muffins are all about taste and texture.

I received this wonderful muffin recipe book for Christmas from the Irish family, it is called ‘Scrumptious Muffins‘ by Marc Grossman and although I have drooled over the pictures for the last few months, today I finally got around to trying it out.

I decided on the Raspberry Muffin recipe because the introduction said that it ‘doesn’t get easier that this’, I liked the sound of that!

Well, it was an accurate description, such an easy no-faff recipe, I didn’t even need to use the electric mixer. There are no eggs in the recipe which is great because the adding eggs part is normally when things go wrong or get messy for me. I did make one alteration; I added a bag of white chocolate drops to the batter, because we all know that raspberries get very lonely when they are not accompanied by white chocolate.

Anyway they came out of the oven picture perfect. I mean really, look at them!

The blue gingham cases help the gorgeousness (they were a gift from Mum, thanks Mum!) But I love the fact that once muffins are out of the oven there is nothing more you need to do to them. You don’t need to prettify them, they are perfect as they are.

But I said that when it comes to Muffins what count is the taste. So how did these taste?

Freaking awesome! Especially when you have them when they are still warm. White chocolate and raspberries in a buttery cake bundle! What more could you want?

So in conclusion I loved this recipe, it was quick, easy, generated very little washing up, and the finished muffins looked and tasted fantastic. Basically I have found a new go-to baking recipe.