Jam Donut Muffins

In my quest to avoid paying attention to the AFL grand final this year, I have been baking. Although I did receive 2 new cook books in the mail over the past 3 weeks (it's an addiction paid for by my jewellery!), I couldnt help but make some old favourites from my many hours spent trawling food blogs for ideas.

First up, Jam Donut Muffins! Or actually, Jam Doughnut Muffins. I'm yet to understand the difference, Google tells me there isn't any so I'm going with what I know.







This is such an easy one bowl recipe. All the ingedients in:

 Dollop some jam on a bit of the mixture - I went with nutella, jam and lemon curd for variety.

 And then cover it over with some more mixture.

They bake up beautifully, and finish off well with some melted butter and cinnamon sugar.

What I like about these is they give you a donutty (new word) type snack but minus the deep fryer, and they are SO easy to put together.

I like to put different fillings in them, I made a double batch today with lemon curd for my lemon crazy Mum, as well as nutella in some for me and raspberry jam for hubby.

The innards of a nutella muffin. At its most perfect when still warm.

Jam Donut/Doughnut Muffins
From: Nigella
Ingredients
1 1/3 cups self raising flour
1/3 cup white sugar
1/2 cup milk
7 tablespoons of  vegetable oil
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
12 teaspoons strawberry jam/nutella/apricot jam/whatever you like!

Topping
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Method
- Preheat oven 180 celcius
- With a fork, beat together the milk, oil, egg and vanilla.
- Stir this into the flour and 1/3 cup sugar to combine. Don't overbeat, a few lumps are fine.
- Spoon mixture into muffin cups so just under 1/3 full.
- Add a teaspoon of jam into the center of the cup, and then more muffin mix so just about full.
- Bake 20 minutes or until the tops of the muffins spring back when pressed lightly. Remove from oven.

- Melt butter in a small bowl, combine sugar and cinnamon on a small plate.
- Whilst still warm, take muffins out of cups (I leave them in as it's less messy to give them to people), roll in butter and then sugar. Eat warm (or warm briefly in microwave later!)

Triple Chocolate Brownies

Okay so here's an admission, I'm cook book addicted. Every time I see a special on at the supermarket - you know, one of those 'buy 3 of a particular brand, get this cook book free' type ones, I'm there with a shopping basket full of choc chips.
This recipe is from my latest "free" cook book acquisition, "Australia's Sweet Baking Favourites" by Nestle. It's the second similar book by Nestle I've picked up in the same manner this year, but it has a coconut cherry slice in it which I'm dying to make. I am pretty sure it's the same as one I found on the back of a milk melts packet as a child! I'll report back on that one, but in the meantime, here are some brownies!

Again, super easy recipe. Melt the butter, chocolate and sugar..

 Stir in flour, eggs and choc chips and put into greased, lined pan!

 Cool, slice, and eat. They are incredibly rich, you won't want big pieces!

Triple Chocolate Brownies
From: "Australia's Sweet Baking Favourites" by Nestle.
Ingredients
125g butter, chopped
1 1/3 cups/200g dark cooking chocolate, chopped
1/2 cup caster sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 1/4 cups plain flour
1 cup/190g white choc chips
1 cup/190g milk choc chips

Method
1. Preheat oven to 180C/160C fan forced. Grease and line a 19cm square cake pan.
2. Combine butter, dark cooking chocolate and sugar in a large saucepan, stir over low heat until melted. Allow to cool 10 minutes (I suggest longer, as my choc chips started to melt when mixed in!)
3. Stir in eggs, flour and choc chips. Spoon mixture into prepared pan and smooth the top.
4. Bake 25 minutes or until mixture is just firm to touch. Cool in pan. Turn out and cut into squares to serve. (Lesson learned by me - make sure that the brownies are definitely cool, I was impatient and ended up with broken up brownies rather than beautifully sliced ones!!)

Brown Butter Blondies With Brown Sugar

Brownies are incredibly popular and SO easy to make, I don't know of anyone who doesn't know what a brownie is, or how delicious they are.

However, I hadn't heard of blondies until I became addicted to baking blogs in 2009, while I was living in England with lots of time to kill during cold wintery days. Turns out they are pretty tasty as well.
This particular blondie uses brown butter, or basically butter which has been simmered in a pan until it turns golden in colour. It adds a slightly deeper taste to the blondies and really works well with the brown sugar in this recipe.

The best bit about these is that the mix ins can be easily changed to your preference. I'm not a nut love but I'm sure macadamias and white chocolate would be amazing!

Just out of the oven - perfect.

 Check out the chunks of white chocolate. Yum.

Brown Butter Blondies with Brown Sugar
From: Chocolatesuze
Ingredients
200g unsalted butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon bi-carb soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup plain flour
Add ins, such as choc chips, nuts etc. I used roughly 1/2 cup each of white chocolate and caramel choc chips.

Method
- Preheat oven to 175 degrees celcius, grease and line a slice tin or brownie pan.
- Cube butter. Melt in a saucepan over medium heat, swirling in the pan. When the butter turns a golden colour, remove from the heat.
- Add butter to the brown sugar in a bowl and beat together.
- Add egg and vanilla, mix.
- Sift flour, baking powder, bi-carb and salt and stir into butter mixture until just combined.
- Stir through your mix-ins.
- Cook for 15-20 mins. Will still be a little bit wobbly in the middle when done.
- Remove from oven, cool completely in tin before removing and slicing.

Let me know how yours were, which mix-ins worked well for you?