Kids Cooking Thursday: Choc Orange Muffins

A rather delicious muffin recipe from Coles free Winter magazine. My MIL made these, and they were so delicious I thought we should make a batch ourselves. Nice and easy, and according to the recipe, only $0.65 a serve. I used expensive dark chocolate, but I also managed to get 3 more than they did, so I'm not sure where that leaves me.

Choc Orange Muffins
175g butter, chopped
175g dark chocolate, chopped (we used half Lindt Orange Intense and half Green & Blacks Maya Gold, for that extra orange hit)
1 cup brown sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1 orange, zested, and sliced into thin slices (you'll need at least 6)
1 cup SR flour
2 Tbsp cocoa

Preheat oven to 180°C. Line a 12 hole muffin tray with patty cases.

Melt butter and chocolate together


Add in the sugar


Stir until the sugar has dissolved


Zest the orange

Add the beaten eggs and the orange zest into the chocolate mixture and beat with a wooden spoon until well combined.
Sift the flour and cocoa.

Fold the cocoa and flour into the mixture - lick mix off hand when you think Mum isn't watching

Fill the prepared pans with a dessert spoon of mixture each. 2/3s full is where you should aim for. Top each muffin with a chunk of orange slice. A quarter or third of a slice is enough, depending on the size of your orange. (I trimmed the peel from our orange slices, because none of us like peel)

Obligatory In-the-oven-because-I-forgot-to-take-a-photo Photo

Bake for 20-25 minutes, until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack before eating.

You can see my three "extra" muffins at the back - they were the ones that didn't fit in my tray. I just used double cases and set them on a flat tray.

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Kids Cooking Thursday: Chocolate, Orange, and Chocolate Chunk Muffins

Chocolate, Orange, and Chocolate Chunk Muffins
from Mad about Muffins by Diana Bonaparte

120g butter
100g dark chocolate
2 oranges
a little milk
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
285g plain flour
200g light muscovado sugar
1 tsp bicarb soda
1/8 tsp salt
150g milk chocolate, roughly chopped

Preheat the oven to 190°C. Grease and flour 12 muffin tin sections or line with paper liners.

Melt the butter and the chocolate together in a bowl over a pan of simmering water until smooth.

Grate the zest from the oranges into a medium sized bowl. Squeeze the juice from both fruit.

Make the orange juice up to 190g with a little milk and combine with orange zest. Add in the egg and vanilla and mix well, then whisk this mixture into the melted chocolate and butter.

Sift the flour, light muscovado sugar, bicarb soda and salt into a large bowl. You will need to push the light muscovado sugar through the sieve with the back of a spoon.

Add the butter and chocolate mixture to the flour mixture and fold everything together until just blended. Fold in the chocolate chunks.

Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin tin sections. Bake for 22-25 minutes until the muffins are well risen and the tops spring back when gently pressed.

Transfer to a wire rack to cool a little before eating.

This was Master Five's choice for a birthday 'cake' for his sixth birthday party. We made them ahead of time, letting them cool completely to room temperature before freezing them. I took them out of the freezer the night before the party, slapped a thin coat of Betty Crocker's Chocolate frosting (sure it's premade and full of ingredients known only by numbers, but it tastes so damn gooood!) and topped them with pirate foam shapes from the scrapbooking aisle. Because I am not so good with the freehand icing drawing.

A few little changes in technique and ingredients, we used brown sugar instead of light muscovado, and Valencia oranges, which were so juicy, we had 190ml from one orange, so Master One and I drank the leftover juice, and we didn't need any milk. One thing I found, with the brown sugar, was that if we tipped it all in a bowl and throughly mixed it through the flour first, it was easier to sift, because it didn't stick to itself so much. And as always, I melted my chocolate and butter in the microwave - it's fine if you use low temps and know what you are doing. ;)

This was an entry for
The Cookbook Challenge: Week 24 - Chocolate.

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Kids Cooking Thursday: Jaffa Cupcakes in Peels

The second flavour of extra-credit cupcakes from Cupcake Project that I had on my list (see here for what I'm talking about) was more a technique than a flavour. Stef made vanilla cupcakes from scratch, but we made chocolate cakes from a packet mix. Yes, yes, I know, but today's lesson I was hoping to impart, was not one of quality ingredients, the value of doing things from scratch, blah, blah, it was 'don't be afraid to try something different'. Like grilling cupcakes in orange peels.

I know I don't need to share instructions on how to make a packet mix cake, so I'll just fill you in on the bits not written on the back of the box.

First, remove juice and pulp from oranges. (Juice half as many oranges as you want cakes.)

Miss Four was happy to oblige

Heaven forbid any citrus be squeezed in the house without Master One's help!

Yep, this one's done Mum!

Place peels in a muffin tray.

Make cake mix as directed on the box, substituting some of the orange juice for some of the water or milk that the directions call for, if you wish. Otherwise, drink it straight away, because the vitamins in orange juice oxidise quickly, leaving the juice tasting funny, and not as good for you.

Fill the peels 2/3s full with batter, and cook like normal cupcakes.

Yummy!

Leftover batter became babycakes

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