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 Muffins

It's my last day on the couch relaxing before going back to work tomorrow. I had an order to post so thought I'd head to the shops while I was out - and came across the new Nestle Caramel Chocolate Bits. This was a little too exciting for me as a caramel lover, so naturally I came home with a bag of them. As I'm still in lazy couch potato mode, I thought I'd try them out with an easy favourite, Triple Chocolate Muffins.

This recipe is SO easy, but extremely yum. The vegetable oil serves to make them nice and moist, and buttermilk is always a star ingredient in any baked good!

Sift flour and cocoa, add sugar and choc bits in a bowl.

 Put eggs, oil and buttermilk in a jug.

 Mix them together!

I use a regular cupcake tin rather than a muffin pan as the muffins are so rich, I feel that muffin sized they'd be a little too much. Ready to go in the oven!

Out of the oven 20 minutes later, looking good enough to eat already..

 But adding a white chocolate melt to the top makes them that little more impressive to look at, and you can never have too much chocolate in a triple choc muffin anyway!

All melted 2 mins later and looking good!

Triple Choc Muffins - from Women's Weekly Easy Baking
Makes 12 (I got 20 by using a regular cupcake tin)
Ingredients
1 3/4 cups self raising flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
3/4 brown sugar, firmly packed
1/2 cup dark choc bits (I used milk chocolate chips)
1/2 cup white choc bits (I used caramel chips)
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
2/3 cup vegetable oil
White chocolate melts, for decoration

Method
1. Preheat oven to 200c. Line 12-hole muffin tin with paper cases.
2. Sift flous and cocoa into large bowl, stir in sugar and choc bits. Stir in combined eggs, buttermilk and oil. Do not over mix, mixture should be lumpy.
3. Divide mixture into paper cases. Bake muffins 20 minutes, remove from oven. Top each muffin with a white chocolate melt, return to oven and bake a further 2 minutes.
4. Stand muffins in pan 5 minutes before removing to cool fully on wire rack.