Wednesday 10 January 2007

Bake it Better


I was telling my friend that I should really cut down my baking sessions to only once a week, as most bakes are very fattening. Yet, I could not resist the itch to bake something by mid-week. I made Orange muffins this morning at 6.30am right after my elder boy has gone off to school. I used the same recipe as the Oreo Muffins which I made earlier, and substitute the milk with orange juice and added in grated zest of an orange.

This time, I used a new set of paper liners. These muffin (or cupcake) cups are actually bigger than I thought. They have greater depth than the usual ones that I used. The batter could only fill up to 5 cups instead of the usual 6, and the cups were barely half-filled. As such, the muffins looked rather small in the paper cups. This recipe adopts the biscuit method (or the creaming method), that is, the butter is creamed with sugar before the other ingredients are added. As usual, my muffins came out with cracked tops. Don't you think it looked more like those chinese steamed cakes (huat kueh) instead of a muffin??

According to this website, Joy of Baking, "the 'perfect' American Muffin is symmetrical with a domed top. The surface of the muffin should be bumpy and the volume of the batter should have almost doubled during baking. The muffin should feel light for its size and when cut in half its interior should be moist and tender with no tunnels." Well, I consoled myself that my muffins did fit these description...they were light, moist and tender with no tunnels. Nevertheless, I am still not very satisfied with this and will continue to try out new recipes in order to achieve "my"perfect muffins!

3 comments:

sue said...

Hello, love your blog... it truly make me wanna heat up the oven and bake up a storm. :P

I just wanna ask something. I have used these souffle cups before but each time I use them for cupcakes, they rise well but tend to sink during the cooling period and do not stick to the sides like the normal paper cups. So it's like I can practically pour out that puny bundle from inside these souffle cups :( Any idea why this is happening?

Happy Homebaker said...

Hi Sue, may I ask what kind of cupcakes did you make? I have once used these paper cups to bake some left over batter from a chiffon cake (beating of egg yolks and whites separately), and the same thing as you described happened to me. When I used them for cupcakes that are made by creaming butter and sugar, they were fine. So I guess it is the type of batter that is causing the problem.

sue said...

Hmm... I use Nigella's basic cupcake recipe most often as I like that it's moist. But her recipe just basically asks to dump in all the ingredients and mix!