In normal circumstances I am not an
early riser (I'm more of an average riser), but I've been having
problems with pain waking me up so rather than stay in bed and be
annoyed about not being asleep I decided to get up and do something
productive. And that something productive would be some baking. I had
acquired some more blackcurrants
from one of my colleagues and we had all had a rather fraught week at
work so some Friday treats featuring these would be in order.
The thing that I really wanted to do
with these blackcurrants was a cheesecake, but this would not be
suitable for work place snacking, and it would probably be a bit
ambitious for these unaccustomed early hours. Instead I would make
some muffins, blackcurrant with some sort of cheesecake feature. This
should theoretically be a simple combination of summer fruit muffins
and chocolate cheesecake muffins – without the chocolate. The
concept of blackcurrant and chocolate appeals to me but I wasn't sure
that it would universally popular.
The most annoying part of the process
was preparing the blackcurrants, getting rid of all the little woody
bits from the ends of them. From my previous experience of dealing
with blackcurrants I didn't even bother trying to do this with a
knife and went straight to plucking with my (clean) fingers. The
recipe called for 140g and I had about 300g so I just needed about
half of them. To prepare this many took about 20 minutes which is
ridiculous when you see how few it actually amounts to.
The trick with muffins, I have been led
to believe, is to keep the wet and dry ingredients separate until
it's time for them to be baked. So before getting on with the main
muffin part I did the cheesecake part so that the final assembly
could go ahead quickly when the time came. I mixed 110g of soft
cheese and 45g of caster sugar which would be distributed to make a
filling. Then I mixed the dry ingredients: 280g self-raising flour,
1tsp baking powder and 100g caster sugar. This was less sugar than
the recipe called for but I anticipated that the filling would add
sweetness and I don't like things too sweet anyway. The wet
ingredients consisted of 240ml milk, 90ml vegetable oil and an egg,
all beaten together.
I prepared the muffin tins (although I
had to use cupcake cases as I have somehow run out of muffin cases
which was a bit annoying as the fit wasn't quite right) and then
poured the wet ingredients into the dry. The other trick with
muffins, I have been led to believe, is not to over mix – the
mixture should be quite runny and a bit lumpy. Finally I quickly
stirred through the blackcurrants. I was a bit worried that they
would all sink to the bottom when the muffins were baked but there
was nothing I could do about that. I quickly filled each case with a
tablespoon of muffin mixture, followed by a teaspoon of cheesecake
filling mixture, topped with another teaspoon or so of muffin
mixture.
They baked at 190°C
for about 25minutes. The cheesecake filling prevents an accurate
skewer test but I'm pretty confident with muffins and they can be
relied upon to be done once they look a bit golden. Some
of the cheesecake filling had oozed out but to me this looked rather
appealing.
I
packed up enough for one each at work plus some spare for anyone with
a big appetite (we all know who!) – leaving a few for Matt and his
mum, who was coming round for tea. What I had failed to appreciate
was that to top our fraught week off 2 people were on leave, which
(when combined with sickness) meant that at 4 people we were down to
50% power. So there were plenty of muffins to go round. Clearly they
had some magic in them as we had a remarkably non-fraught
day.
Maybe I should try this early morning baking more often, and maybe I should try the chocolate / blackcurrant combination with the blackcurrants I've got left.
(And in case you were wondering the blackcurrants didn't sink.)
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