Strawberry Muffins

I love my cookery shows and I am quite hooked to them. I enjoy watching them on the idiot box more than browsing for recipes over the net. I was recently watching one of these cookery shows called Rachel Bake! By Rachel Allen. Ms. Allen shows some incredible stuffs with baking. Her baking is not just limited to desserts but a wide range of savories, tarts, pies and breads. One of her recipes included Swiss rolls with strawberry jam and cream stuffed between sheets of sponge cake. She shared the recipe from scratch which included making the sponge cake. During the course of teaching this recipe to her cooking school students, she says this is a guilt free version with no butter in it. Now, I had to give this one a try, indeed a no butter would mean truly guilt free!

Instead of making the Strawberry Swiss rolls, I tweaked the recipe to make cup cakes instead. The basic recipe pretty much remained the same with minor changes. Instead of 4 eggs I used only 2 and in turn used a quarter tsp baking powder which was not called for in her recipe. Honestly, I don't like the eggy flavors coming through the cakes. So I prefer using them in lesser quantities than what is generally mentioned in a recipe. Cake turned out good, but not fantastic as I had expected. They really lacked the much needed fat in them. They came out spongy, yet dry in flavors. These did have eminent eggy flavors coming through. Having made sponge cakes in the past, I could clearly perceive the difference. These cakes definitely require a great amount of filling to camouflage and compensate the shortcomings due to missing butter/fat. Luckily, as per Rachel I used strawberry compote as fillings and this supplemented the flavors. You may use any other fillings of you choice. Rachel also recommends raspberry fillings with cream.

Strawberry Muffins

INGREDIENTS

125g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
2 Eggs
125g caster sugar
2 tbsp warm water
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp baking powder
Melted Butter, for greasing

For the filling:

6 tsp strawberry jam

DIRECTIONS

Grease the muffin tray with melted butter. Whisk the eggs and caster sugar together in a large mixing bowl until it's light and fluffy. Then add the water and vanilla extract. Add the baking powder and the flour, about one-third at a time, and fold it into the mixture gently. Pour the mixture gently into the prepared muffin tray till it is half way high. Drop a tsp full of strawberry compote in the middle of each batter to form the filling. Cover with the remaining batter about three fourths up and leave room for the cake and bake in the oven for 20 minutes, or until the cake has shrunk away a little from the sides of the tin.

Break open the cake and there you'll notice the strawberry fillings. These strawberry fillings can sink in to the bottom, so be sure that you have filled the batter half way up and then drop the compote and cover them. Bake them immediately. Rachel suggests to place a clean damp tea towel over the cake and leave to cool for 30 minutes. I sprinkled a good amount of fruit juice to keep these cakes moist.

These are great as tea time accompaniments. We enjoyed them over a good cup of masala chai. I ran out of cream, so these went without any frosting. Top them with a good frosting of your choice and you can take double pleasure indulging in these. Of course, you can't call them guilt-free then, yeah! The next time I make these, they will surely be accompanied by a cream topping.