Food supply

My aunt and uncle will be away for awhile and I've been requested to bake some muffins for my cousin so that he would not starve for the duration of their trip. While I find this highly amusing since my cousin is 20 years old and very well capable of making his own food, I gladly took the opportunity. Any reason to bake!

My aunt had an old pack of Craisins sweetened dried cranberries and asked me to use it as one of the ingredients for the muffins (that will be kept in the freezer while they're away).

A quick Google search brought me to this recipe:

Craisin Muffins

(Recipe adapted from CD Kitchen)

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup milk
• 1 1/2 cups Craisins sweetened dried cranberries
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 cups stirred flour
• 2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 cup white chocolate buttons (optional)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
2. In a large bowl, whip eggs, oil and milk until liquids are frothy.
3. Stir together flour, baking powder and sugar; stir gently into liquid mixture.
4. Add Craisins all at once, and optional white chocolate buttons. Stir gently but do not overmix.
5. Spray muffin tins with vegetable coating, covering very well. Heap batter to top of cups.
6. Bake 30 minutes or until muffins are light brown and a toothpick comes out just moist.

Makes 12 muffins.

The muffins came out with a ring of brown sticky gloop around the edges. Either there was too much oil in the recipe or the white chocolate buttons were too close to the top of the pan that it seeped out of the muffins.

The original recipe didn't use white chocolate, but from this recipe, mixing white chocolate and cranberries seemed like a great idea.

And it was! Aside from the sticky ring, the white chocolate chunks complemented the tang of the dried cranberries. I just have to figure out if aforementioned gloop is congealed oil or white chocolate residue. Here's hoping it's the latter.

Update: The muffins turned out hard in the morning. I think I may have overmixed the wet and dry ingredients. I think I'll be giving this recipe a miss!