S'mores Muffins #MuffinMonday

Graham crackers, chocolate chips and mini marshmallows baked up in a sweet muffin. What else could I call them but S'mores Muffins!

I am so excited because as I write this post and schedule it to go live on Monday for Muffin Monday, I probably should be packing for our weekend on the Sinai Peninsula.  A beach holiday is the best holiday always.  And our girls are here so it will be the four of us at the beach, which makes it the perfect holiday.  But first:  I am making muffins.  And these are wonderful!

S'mores Muffins

The original recipe from Dwell on Joy called for graham crackers and chocolate chips so, of course, the first thing that sprang to my mind was s’mores.  Some of my best childhood memories include making s'mores around a Girl Scout campfire.  Unless you have roasted a marshmallow over an open fire and smashed it between graham crackers with a square of chocolate, you haven't lived!   Because of availability, I had to replace the graham crackers with digestive biscuits but I think that was a good thing! (Especially since I had special digestives with dark chocolate on one side.)  And naturally, s’mores had to include mini marshmallows.

Ingredients
 2 cups or 250g flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup or 70g sugar
1 cup or 115g of graham crackers or digestive biscuits with dark chocolate :)
1 cup milk
1/3 cup or 80ml canola or sunflower oil
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup or 90g chocolate chips
1 cup or 50g mini marshmallows

For the topping:
6 squares dark or milk chocolate candy bar about 1/3 oz or 10g each
24 mini marshmallows

Method Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and liberally grease your muffin tin with butter or non-stick spray.

Crush your graham crackers or digestive biscuits with a pestle or drink muddler in a big mixing bowl.  Don’t get them too fine.  You don’t want just powder but some crunchy bits as well.

Add your flour, baking powder, salt and sugar to the cracker/biscuit bowl.  Mix well and set aside.

In another smaller bowl, combine your wet ingredients - milk, oil, egg and vanilla.  Whisk well.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until just moistened.  You can even leave a little flour showing since you are going to continue to mix as you fold in the chocolate chips and marshmallows.

Gently fold in your chocolate chips and the 1 cup or 50g of mini marshmallows. 

Divide your batter between the greased muffin cups.

Carefully score your six chocolate squares with a serrated knife and break them into two even halves.

Decorate each muffin by inserting a half square of chocolate bar in the middle with two mini marshmallows on either side.

Bake 20-25 minutes or until muffins are a golden brown.

Cool for a few minutes and then, run a dull knife around the muffin tin to remove the muffins.  (Sometimes the marshmallows stick a little, even when the tin is well greased.)

Cool on a rack and then serve.  These are great with a glass of cold milk!

Enjoy!

The muffins have cool holes in the middle where the marshmallows have melted into the batter while baking.

Pecan Golden Syrup Bundt Cake

My house has been full these last few weeks, filled with family and good times.  Of course, it has kept me busy but it is a joy to have more folks to feed.  Since I am always looking for new ideas, I am delighted to take part for the first time in Belleau Kitchen's Random Recipe Challenge.  

Here’s how the Random Recipe Challenge works:   Number your cookbooks and choose one randomly.  Or make a big pile of them and pick one out with your eyes closed.  Then make the first recipe on the first random page you open.   Since I belong to EatYourBooks,  this was very easy.  Right now I have 89 cookbooks registered (Don’t ask me how many aren’t yet!) so I asked my daughter to pick a number and she said 11.  I counted down and the 11^th book on my list is Nigella’s Kitchen.  One of my very favorite cookbooks!  The random page I opened to was her Pecan Maple Bundt Cake, which I had yet to make, so it was perfect.  I don’t have maple syrup in Cairo but thankfully the Random Recipe rules allow for substitutions for availability or dietary restriction.  So here goes.

Ingredients

For the pecan filling:

1 rounded 1/2 cup or 75g plain flour

2 rounded tablespoons or 30g soft unsalted butter

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup or 150g pecans (or walnuts) (I used pecans, of course.) 

125ml maple or golden syrup (I used Lyle’s Golden Syrup.)

For the cake:

2 1/2 cups or 310g flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda or bicarbonate of soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 rounded 1/2 cup or 125g soft unsalted butter

Scant 3/4 cup or 160g sugar

2 eggs

1 cup or 250ml sour cream or crème fraîche

1–2 teaspoons confectioners' or icing sugar, for decoration

Method

Preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C and grease your Bundt pan. 

First, make the filling.  Toast your pecans in a baking pan for about 10-15 minutes in the preheating oven.  Watch them carefully so they don’t scorched.  Chop the pecans roughly.

Mix the flour with the butter using a fork.  You want it to look like small crumbs.  

Stir in the cinnamon, chopped pecans and golden syrup.  This will be very thick, almost solid.   Set aside.

To make the cake batter, measure your dry cake ingredients into a small bowl: the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.  Mix well. 

Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl with beaters or in your standing mixer.   

Then beat in one tablespoon of the flour mixture, then one egg.  

Then add another tablespoonful of flour mixture followed by the second egg.

Add the rest of the flour mixture and beat while adding the sour cream.  The batter will be very thick.

Spoon just more than half of the cake batter around the Bundt pan.  Spread the batter up the sides so that you make a channel of sorts in the middle of the batter.  This is to avoid having the filling leak out while baking.

Use a tablespoon to fill the channel in the batter with your pecan filling. 

Cover with the remaining batter and smooth the top. 

Bake in the preheated oven for 30-40 minutes.   Check with a cake tester after 30 minutes.  Make sure to get the tester into the cake part because the filling will probably not come out clean, even when the cake is baked through.

Let the cake cool for 10-15 minutes and then loosen the sides with a small spatula or knife.  Turn the cake out.  

Cool completely and then decorate by sprinkling with icing or confectioners’ sugar.  This cake was gone in a heartbeat!  I think they even licked the plate. 

Enjoy!

If you would like to join the next challenge, follow Belleau Kitchen on Twitter or join the group on Facebook. 

Click on the graphic to see how other bloggers have met the challenge this month!

Orange Marmalade Pumpkin Muffins #MuffinMonday

Thin shred marmalade mixed through sweet pumpkin batter makes these orange marmalade pumpkin muffins deliciously more-ish! Perfect for breakfast, snack or teatime!

When I was about five years old, we moved from Houston to Trinidad.  My father worked for Texaco and we lived in the small company camp of Pointe-a-Pierre.  When we first arrived, our house wasn’t ready yet because my father had asked them to install windows. All the little bungalows had screens to keep out the bugs, but no glass.  He says they called him a crazy American because he wanted windows!  Of course, his goal was an air-conditioned house and windows were essential to that plan.

Anyway, we stayed the first few weeks in the Texaco guest house, next to a main dining hall, and took most (all?) of our meals there. It was my first introduction to orange marmalade which looks just like a sweet jam but with little strips of orange rind. I was an all-American grape jelly eater so I knew sweet on toast and had no problem loading up with butter and marmalade. That first bite was bitter surprise. Followed closely by dismay. “Who eats this foul stuff?” I thought.

Fast forward years and years later, and I married a man who loves marmalade. He grew up eating the foul stuff, being of the British persuasion. We lived a few places where I couldn’t find orange marmalade for him so I started hauling back a large can of thin-cut Seville oranges  from the United Kingdom to make it myself. Because that’s the kind of person I am.

Each can was almost a kilo of prepared oranges. Just add water and sugar, cook it down and you have several jars of “homemade” marmalade to last the year. And, you know, I discovered that orange marmalade wasn’t near as bitter or nasty as I remembered it. In fact, it was quite nice.
I was delighted this week when I received the email with the #MuffinMonday recipe ( which came from this wonderful book ) because I knew my husband would love them.  If you are a fan of orange marmalade or if it’s been a long time since you gave it a second chance, try these. 

Ingredients
2 1/2 cups or 315g flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup or 170g sugar
1/2 cup shredded orange marmalade plus more to glaze
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup or 220g cooked pumpkin (canned or fresh)
1 cup or 240ml buttermilk  (or 1 tablespoon white vinegar mixed 10 minutes ahead with 1 cup or 240ml whole milk)
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled

Method
Preheat the oven to 400°F or 200°C and line your muffin tin with paper liners or spray thoroughly with non-stick spray.

Mix together all of your dry ingredients: the flour, baking soda, baking powder, sugar and salt in a large bowl.

In another small bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients except the butter: the orange marmalade, the eggs, the pumpkin and buttermilk. 

Once they are thoroughly mixed, whisk in the melted butter.

Pour the liquid mixture over the flour mixture and fold it in with a rubber spatula until the flour is incorporated.  Do not over mix.

Divide the batter between your muffin cups and bake for 20-25 minutes or until the muffins are golden brown and a toothpick inserted into one comes out clean.

Allow to cool for a few minutes and then remove the muffins from the tin. 

Add about half a teaspoon of marmalade to the top of each muffin and spread it around with the back of your teaspoon to glaze.

Enjoy!