Sourdough: Banana & Walnut Muffins

Sourdough Experiment #2 

To make more invididual sized cakes/muffins with Herman and also a trial with Juvela all purpose gluten free flour.


Ingredients:

110g All-purpose, gluten-free flour
110g light muscovado sugar
half tsp baking powder
quart tsp Xanthan Gum
80 ml Veg Oil (I used Walnut oil for this)
1 egg
half cup of chopped walnuts [2]
2 ripe bananas, mashed
half cup (or half portion) of Herman starter [1]

Preheat oven to 180 degrees.  Line a muffin tray with cases - 15, if cupcake size, 12 if muffin size, or grease a cake/loaf tin ready for your mixture.

1. Sift together the flour, sugar, powder and gum into a large mixing bowl.
2. In a separate bowl, mix together veg oil, egg, mashed banana and your half herman portion.
3. Mix the wet ingredients into your dry, add the chopped nuts and combine well.
4. Spoon out into your tin/cases.  For Muffins bake about 20-30 mins.  For cake tin/loaf tin bake for about 50mins - 1hr (see notes).

Notes:

[1] Lots of people measure out their Herman differently.  Some work by a cupful, some by ladlefuls, millilitres etc, you get the picture.  Apply your particular preference accordingly, but only use a half measure.

[2] You could use any kind of nuts you fancy, of course!

If making a loaf/cake with the mixture you might need to put a greaseproof/tinfoil 'lid' on top, just to stop the surface of the cake getting burnt.

Juvela is a very odd flour to work with.  I feel it has the consistency of icing sugar, with the same 'crunchiness' (think freshly fallen, powder snow) and might not work so well with scones, but thats an experiment for another day!

These Muffins were really light, but quite sticky, best eaten with a spoon! ;)

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!

Starting anew

This blog is ancient and was largely abandoned. Its been dusted down, given a freshen up, and is about to become a catalogue (of sorts) for kitchen experiments. This will most likely be of a baking and cooking nature but every so often might also contain other home made things. It will almost certainly contain a healthy measure of nuts ;)

There are a few reasons why I'm getting more creative in the kitchen;

1. I'm trying a dietary change and eliminating gluten as best I can.
2. I really enjoy baking but am finding gluten-free (gf) flour to be a bit of a mystery.  Each brand differs in texture and the variety available now is vast.  My biggest challenge will be to create a perfectly light scone.
3. I've started experimenting with sourdough.  We used to have a bowl of sweet sourdough on the kitchen counter when I was a teen and thought it might be interesting to see how well, or perhaps badly, it works with gf products.
4. The kitchen table is often used to 'make stuff' of all sorts.  My interest recently has largely waned.  The muse had left the building.  I'm hoping now that we're entering Autumn and I'm being creative in other ways that the muse will once again come and rest here for a while.