Monday, September 03, 2012

Sourdough: Triple Chocolate muffins

Sourdough Experiment #1

Herman - he of Amish Friendship cake fame, and a sweet sourdough - has continually been bubbling away in our kitchen for some weeks now.  We've only made two fairly standard cakes with the mixture and I knew there would be scope for all sorts of applications.

So therefore experiment 1 was twofold.  Individual cakes, using our bubbly little friend and also just for the sake of experimentation, to make something that didn't contain fruit or nuts (as much of my baking often does).

I cannot however take any credit for the inception of these, as I was inspired by Catherine over at Bellaandwill who has been experimenting with Herman. Although I deviated a bit, the core of the recipe must be credited, with many thanks, to Catherine.

Recipe:

225g all purpose, gluten free, white blended flour
25g cocoa powder
1tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
half tsp Xanthan Gum
75g each of dark, milk and white broken chocolate pieces [1]
1 egg
284ml carton buttermilk [2]
85g veg oil
half cup of herman

pre-heat oven to 200 and line a muffin tray with cases. [3]

1.  In a large bowl sift together the dry ingredients; flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, soda and gum.  Add the chocolate chips.

2.  In a separate bowl combine all wet ingredients; egg, buttermilk, veg oil and half herman.

3.  Pour wet ingredients into dry, mix together, but don't overwork.  Spoon into your cases and bake in the over for 15-20 mins (depending on your oven, 17 mins in mine).

4.  Leave to cool then enjoy!

Notes:

[1] Catherine's original recipe here calls for 85g of each, which is probably a better amount.  Mine was less as I was using up supplies that we had.  I do think it suffered from being slight on the chocolate.

[2]  Lacking in buttermilk. I used half plain yoghurt/half semi-skimmed milk (140ml each) whisked together which I often use as a reasonable alternative to buttermilk in a pinch.

[3]  I used silicone cupcake cases so got 15 in the batch, instead of 12.

Also worth noting; I used an extra 25g of flour and the half tsp of Xanthan Gum because it was gluten-free baking.  Follow any of the links to Catherine's blog, and her non-gf recipe.

The texture is really lovely, very light and fluffy.


Triple Chocolate muffins (in silicone cupcake cases)

Admittedly this is not the best photograph of them, but I have to also admit that they didn't really last long enough to get a decent photograph... ooops!

I will probably be making these again so will try and take better pictures - and 'process' shots too - next time!



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