Banana or Custard apple muffins: Choose your fruit!

My previous post talks about my recent discovery and fascination with a new baking supple store in Bangalore; well not a ‘new’ store but one that I ‘newly discovered’. My shopping spree at this store included these very dainty looking polka dotted muffin cups. Not only are they bake-proof but they have a plastic sort of lining within which allows you the leisure of not having to grease your muffin cups. Just get them out of the cupboard, pour you batter and bake! No fuss with the muffin trays and the parchment paper! At one rupee per cup, I think it’s a fair deal. You need to buy a minimum of 100 pieces, but that has never stopped a keen baker.

I am a big fan of custard apples and managed to get some really sweet and flavourful ones from a fruit vendor close to home. So I substituted my trademark banana muffin recipe for custard apples. It did take me some patience to deseed the fruit, but I can say with some relief that the results did bear fruit; pun intended. I always bake this recipe in my loaf tin and never realized that it can make up to 16 medium sized muffins! Imagine my little cousin’s delight when she came home to visit us for her Diwali break and was absolutely thrilled to find not only my grandmum’s chaklis and pedas but my muffins and brownies too!

You will be pleasantly surprised to know that this recipe works perfectly well even when you just dump all the ingredients into one big bowl, mix well and bake! You don’t need to actually follow the recipe; but for the perfectionists out there here’s the detailed recipe anyway!

Prep time: 15 min

Cooking time: 60 min    

Serves: Makes 16 muffins

Ingredients

If using bananas:

175g unsalted butter, softened and chopped

175g brown sugar

110g caster sugar

½ tsp ground cinnamon

3 medium or 2 large bananas, mashed

3 eggs

300 g plain flour

1tsp baking powder

1tsp clear vanilla essence

If using custard apple:

Replace the bananas with 2 custard apples, deseeded and pulp mashed; remove the cinnamon powder from the recipe.

Method

Preheat oven to 170°C. Grease your muffin cups or muffin trays.

First, cream the sugars and butter in large bowl till you achieve a smooth and matt finish.  Separate the egg whites from the yellows. Beat the egg whites till soft peaks form. Add the egg yellows to the beaten whites and beat some more. Add the vanilla essence and whisk for a minute. Sift the flour with the baking powder.  Add the flour and the whisked eggs to the creamed sugars, alternating them; folding gently till you see a smooth batter without any lumps. Fold in the fruit purée and cinnamon powder (no cinnamon powder for custard apple muffins). Spoon carefully into muffin cups, ensuring that only 3/4^th of the cup is full (allow space for the muffins to rise in the oven). Place muffin cups on a baking tray lined with parchment paper.

Bake at 170°C for 1 hour or until cooked when tested with a skewer.

Serve muffins warm with a cup of English breakfast tea. Delightful!

Red velvet banana cake

I have never been able to stop myself from gorging on that banana cake slice they offer in flights. And I have always wondered what I can do to make it sound/taste more glamorous? As a fruit, banana doesn’t rate high on my list; but when I suffix the word 'banana' with the word 'cake', it doesn’t anymore seem like that boring fruit that mum pestered me to eat every day. So here's an inviting adaptation of an age old recipe - banana cake sandwiched with some rasberry preserve within. Yummy yum!


Make it for a birthday party, a romantic date evening or for a family picnic by the lake. It works for just about any occasion. It’s perfect even for post break-up blues, however; eaten with a large can of ice-cream :)





Serves: 4
Prep time: 15 min
Cooking time: 60 min (includes oven time)


Ingredients
60g (1/3 cup) softened salted butter
1/3 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 small ripe banana (pureed)
110g (1 cup) plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 egg, beaten
100g (3/4 cup) caster sugar
1/4 cup rasberry preserve, beaten with 1tsp warm water
Baking tray




Method
Grease the baking tray with some softened butter and preheat the oven to 180°C. Beat egg till fluffy and keep aside. Sift the plain flour with the baking powder and keep aside. Microwave butter and milk for 2 min in a large bowl. To this add the vanilla essence, caster sugar and banana puree. Beat the mixture till creamy.


Now add the sifted flour and beaten egg alternatively, folding in gently with a spatula to get a lumpy batter of a soft dropping consistency. Do not over mix.


Spoon half the batter into the greased baking tray, filling half of the tray. Spoon the rasberry preserve onto the batter spreading it evenly to form a thin layer. Spoon the remaining half of the batter onto the rasberry preserve layer. Bake in a preheated oven at 180°C. for 40-50min.


Insert a strand of uncooked spaghetti through the cake to check if it is cooked. If it comes out clean, remove the baking tray from the oven and allow to rest on a platform for 15-20 min.


Coat the top surface of the cake with another layer of rasberry preserve. Serve with a dollop of fresh double cream.



Bench notes
The cake may take lesser or longer than 40 min to bake depending on the type of oven/ shape of tray/gooeyness of the over ripe banana.


You may replace the rasberry preserve with blueberry, strawberry or even pureed seasonal fresh fruit like mango or kiwi puree.


This recipe can be mimicked to make muffins or loafs, as the final cake is not very soft or crumbly.

Black magic cupcakes with honeycomb, strawberry cream and strawberry purée

My favourite place in the world is my gourmet wholesale store. It’s situated in a very crowded, busy (not to mention dirty), wholesale market in Kolkata. But when I’m there, I don’t see the filth and hear the loud noises, I just feel my senses going berserk with all the mesmerizing smells and flavours…cheeses, sauces, essences, vinegars, and chocolate! Yesterday I found these amazing Belgian bitter chocolate chips and I had to have them! Like a child in a candy store, my eyes gleaming with desire, I bought them home and made the most indulgent bitter chocolate cupcakes! Personally, I am not a huge fan of chocolate, but dessert is just incomplete without it!

I was disappointed when I couldn’t get the cupcake to ooze chocolate from within (as per my fantasy), so I made them a second time, without much success again (although these were better than batch 1; almost oozing but not wet enough). I realised that it’s the shape of the mould that requires changing and not the actual technique. Read my bench notes below to understand this concept better. Try them and let me know if you got the stubborn babies to ooze chocolate!

Ooze or no-ooze, this cupcake is just divine. Hence the name black magic (kala jadoo sounds more dramatic though)!




Serves: 12
Prep time: 20min
Cooking time: 40min


Ingredients
Cupcakes
125g unsalted butter, cubed
150g dark chocolate roughly chopped
2 eggs
2 egg yolks
125g caster sugar
1tsp vanilla extract
1tsp baking powder
50g plain flour, sifted with baking powder
Muffin paper shells
Muffin tray/moulds

Honeycomb
100g caster sugar
50grm liquid glucose
100ml water
1tbsp bicarb soda

Strawberry cream
50ml double cream, whipped
1tbsp icing sugar
50g fresh strawberries, puréed

Strawberry purée
50g fresh strawberries
1tsp caster sugar
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
30-50ml water

Extra strawberries for serving

Method
Preheat the oven to 200°C.

Cupcakes
For the cupcakes, grease muffin paper shells with some unsalted butter, and place in a muffin tray.

Place butter and chocolate in a small heatproof bowl (use borosil) over a pan of one‑third full gently simmering water (don’t let the bowl touch the water). Stir over medium heat until the chocolate and butter are smooth and combined. Remove from heat and cool slightly.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk the eggs, yolks, sugar and vanilla until thick and pale. Next, gently fold in the flour and then fold in the cooled chocolate mixture until combined. Divide the mixture among the prepared muffin moulds and bake muffins for 12-14min or until risen and just set, but wobbly in the centre. Allow to rest on the bench for 5 minutes, before removing the muffin paper shells.

Honeycomb
For the honeycomb, line a deep roasting tray with baking paper (coming up over the edges).

Place the sugar, glucose and water in a large saucepan. Stir over a medium heat until sugar dissolves, then bring to the boil. Reduce heat to low-medium and simmer for 5 minutes or until a pale-golden caramel. Remove from heat and working quickly, whisk in the bicarb soda (it will froth and bubble – don’t whisk too much otherwise you will knock out all the air bubbles). Quickly pour into the lined pan and lightly shake to level out (take care as pan will become very hot). Cool for 45min or until hard. Break into small chunks

Strawberry cream
For the strawberry cream, whip the cream with the icing sugar until it holds firm peaks. Stir through the pureed strawberries and set aside.

Strawberry purée
For the strawberry purée, place strawberries, cater sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest and water in a medium saucepan. Stir over a medium heat until the sugar dissolves, then bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 5min or until syrupy. Remove from heat; allow to cool for a few minutes and purée in a blender.

Finally, remove the cupcakes from the paper moulds, drizzle with strawberry purée, scatter some honeycomb and extra strawberries and serve with a spoonful of strawberry cream.




Bench notes
This recipe requires the use of non-stick dariole moulds which I could not catch hold of, and so I used the usual cupcake moulds. The shape of the dariole mould (like a tiny bucket) is such that it allows the sides of the cake to cook quickly, while the centre remains gooey and oozes out when you cut the cake (12-14min is sufficient for the outsides to cook completely). This is difficult to achieve with the muffin moulds as the shape of the mould allows equal and quick distribution of heat, leaving the centre of the muffin, surely softer that the sides, but not gooey and wet.

However, if you have non-stick muffin trays, don’t use the muffin paper shells. The paper further blocks the transfer of heat to the sides, leaving you with no choice but to wait until the sides get cooked, by which time the centre is no more wet or gooey. If you do use non-stick muffin trays, be sure to grease the moulds generously with butter.

It is important that while melting the chocolate in the double boiler method, you do not let the chocolate boil; stop heating when it melts.



As easy as it sounds, baking involves a lot of science and technique and it’s only when you get your hands dirty will you actually appreciate these subtle intricacies.