My Favourite Muffins

In the days before Christmas we got a package we had ordered on AliExpress, containing 500 muffin liners. And that's how it all started :)))

I began experimenting with a simple vanilla muffin recipe, trying to perfect it to make exactly 12 puffy and delicious muffins. 

After several iterations, I found this to be the final (so far) perfect proportion of ingredients:

• 180 g flour
• 200 g sugar
• 2 eggs
• 100 g yogurt
• 80 g milk
• 40 g sunflower oil
•  pinch of salt
• 5 g baking powder + 2 g baking soda
  

To the above I might add vanilla, chocolate drops, cocoa, lemon zest, grated chocolate, raisins, nuts, etc.

Preparation: Mix and stir the wet ingredients. Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture and stir. Distribute in 12 muffin forms and bake in a preheated oven at 200C for approx. 20 min, until a toothpick test shows the muffins are done.

 I've made these entirely chocolate flavoured, adding 25 g cocoa to the mixture

I tried them with lemon zest, lemon flavour and lemon icing

I tried them marbled

and even with pears in a cake form. And they tasted perfect with coffee every time!

Pear Cake

Our family loves fruit. Winter or summer, the fruit bowl on the kitchen table is always full. However, from time to time some fruit look better than they taste, days pass and after the first try nobody is tempted to eat them and the fruit risk going bad.

This is what happened to these red pears I bought earlier this week. They looked nice, but were kind of watery and bland. I hate throwing food, so I came up with a recipe for a fruit cake, using the remaining four pears we had in our fruit bowl.

The batter for the cake uses only eggs, oil, sugar and flour, no milk, so it forms a very tasty meringue like crust, while the pears combine with the pastry and make it moist and juicy.

Next time I might try stewing the pears a little in advance, to make them taste more like pear jam.

• four average to small pears
• 1 pack vanilla sugar
• 3 eggs (150 g)
  
• 200 g sugar
• 50 g sunflower oil
• 150 g flour
• 5 g baking powder
• 5 g combined spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves)
  

Grease the baking tray with butter, cut the pears into small pieces and cover with vanilla sugar. Beat the eggs with the sugar and the oil, add the flour, mixed with the baking powder and the spices. Pour the batter over the pears, sprinkle with brown sugar.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180C until the toothpick test indicates that the cake is fully baked. Serve cold with coffee, tea or milk and enjoy!

Another Apple Pie

I've started baking again this autumn and as I experiment with recipes and then forget them and often lose the pieces of paper I've written them on, I'm returning to blogging about baking. Here's the recipe I tried today - an apple pie, again:

Ingredients:

• 3 eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 cups flour
• 1 pack (10 g) baking powder
• 4 tbsp oil
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 cup cranberries, soaked in 2 tbsp rum
• 1/4 cup walnuts
• 1 big apple, peeled  and cut into small pieces
• 1 big pear, cut into small pieces

Preparation: Beat the eggs with the sugar, add the oil, flour with baking powder and cinnamon and stir. Add the cranberries, walnuts and pieces of fruit and pour the batter into a baking dish, greased with butter. Bake in a preheated oven at 180C until ready.

Serve with coffee, milk or juice.

Hooligan Pear Cake

The inspiration for this amazingly juicy and tasty cake came from this publication in one of my favourite Bulgarian cooking blogs. Yesterday I made it with apples and today - with pears and I can recommend both - turns out pears too go well with cinnamon and vanilla.

Ingredients: 

• 3 pears / apples
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup flour
• 50 g butter
• 5 g baking powder
• cinnamon, vanilla

Beat the eggs with the sugar. Add the butter (melted) and the flour with the baking powder. Pour the batter in a greased baking dish (26 cm), spread the cut fruit on top and sprinkle with cinnamon, vanilla and sugar. Bake in a preheated oven at 180C.

Why hooligan - the author called it that because you cut the fruit into irregular forms and just throw the pieces on top without much order or symmetry concerns :)
A picture of yesterday's apple cake before baking.