Quick baking at home is not necessarily pancakes, pies or puffs of frozen dough that are bored with everything. It can be elegant in appearance and unusual in taste. The secret is in the filling. If you make muffins at home with different toppings, but according to the standard recipe, you can get a new taste in every new treat. Cooking takes no more than half an hour, including kneading dough.
Essential Ingredients
Typically, sweet small cupcakes with filling are divided into three types: chocolate (cocoa is added to the dough), fruit (fruit essence) and vanilla. The recipe for vanilla muffin is quite simple and is based on an oil biscuit, which is baked in small portions in special paper tins of small diameter (no more than 5 cm).
For cooking, you need to take:
- 4 eggs;
- 220 grams of granulated sugar;
- 190-200 grams of butter;
- 450 grams of wheat flour;
- 120 ml of milk;
- 12 grams of baking powder for dough;
- 2 grams of vanilla.
You will also need a sweet filling to your liking. Which one to choose - you decide to your liking.
Kneading and baking
The dough for vanilla muffins is prepared in this way: first, the softened butter must be ground with sugar and vanilla into a lush mass, and then beat one egg into it, each time mixing the mass well. Sift the flour and combine with the baking powder, add to the butter and knead the dough, vigorously stirring with a spoon so that there are no lumps. At the very end, pour milk. The dough will be quite thick, reminiscent of sour cream from the refrigerator. On a baking sheet, place paper baking molds at close range - they will not allow vanilla muffins to creep out during the heat treatment. Half fill the dough with the dough, then put in each filling and cover with the rest of the dough. Do not forget that when baking, the dough increases by almost half, so the form should be filled in two-thirds. Otherwise, the pastries will not have a very pleasant appearance, although this will not affect the taste in any way.
Place the baking sheet in the oven and bake muffins at a temperature of 190-200 degrees until cooked. This usually takes no more than twenty minutes. The surface of the muffins may crack slightly. This often happens, so no need to be upset. A small creamy curl or icing will save the situation, and a simple muffin will turn into a cute cupcake.
Muffin toppings
Even without filler, such mini-cupcakes are very tasty, but to diversify them, you can use the following options:
- Fruit jam, jam or marmalade. Strawberries and raspberries are considered the perfect combination with vanilla flavor, but you can experiment by choosing jam from oranges or plums.
- Fresh berries or pieces of fruit, you can even mix. If there is a suspicion that the filling will be sour, then when kneading the dough, you can increase the dose of sugar, thereby compensating for this drawback.
- Boiled condensed milk.
- Thick marmalade.
- Chocolate. Break the tiles into pieces, which are placed in the dough when molding products.
- Custard based on milk and without oil, which is used for the layer of cakes.
- Inexpensive sweets like “Butterscotch”, “Cow” or “Chamomile”. Cutting each into two parts, you can get a great filler for vanilla muffin.
Muffins can be combined with different fillings. It all depends on your individual preferences. When the finished products have cooled slightly, their upper part can be sprinkled with icing sugar or coated with icing, sprinkled with Easter cakes or left unadorned.
Vanilla muffins are usually not coated with cream - this is the privilege of cupcakes (which, in fact, is the difference between these two desserts).
American muffins
Usually they are baked with chocolate filling, but instead of it you can use the more traditional boiled condensed milk “Toffee” or other filler to your taste. A distinctive feature of this dessert from the basic recipe is that instead of butter, lean meat is used here, you can also take coconut, which will give the pastry an unrivaled aroma. Prescription muffin dough products are simple:
- 2 eggs;
- 2 \ 3 Art. l brown sugar;
- 280 ml of milk;
- 90 grams of vegetable oil;
- 3 tbsp. l vanilla sugar;
- 350 grams of wheat flour;
- 2 tsp baking powder;
- 70-80 grams of chocolate for the filling.
How to cook?
The technology for preparing such a vanilla muffin is non-standard: the first thing is sifted flour, and several times in a row. Then, in one bowl, all dry ingredients are mixed according to the recipe, and in another, butter, eggs and milk. It is important not to whip the liquid components with a mixer or whisk, but simply mix with a fork. Then pour the liquid mixture into a dry mixture and mix, but not very diligently: you do not need to wait until the sugar has dissolved or to achieve perfect homogeneity of the dough, as long as there are no dry lumps of unmixed flour. Next, divide the chocolate bar into small pieces and place them in the dough, gently stirring it with a spoon.
Muffin molds do not need to be lubricated, even if they are silicone, not paper. The dough is quite buttery and does not stick at all. Such cupcakes are baked in the oven at a temperature of 180 degrees until cooked, checking them with a wooden stick or focusing on the brown crust of the top of the muffin. Baking time ranges between 15 and 20 minutes. Serve as early as 15 minutes after turning off the oven, lightly sprinkling the top with powdered sugar or a pinch of cocoa powder.
Tip for vegans
If a person does not eat animal products, then this is not a reason to refuse to prepare a vanilla muffin. It is only necessary to replace several products from the recipe described above with vegetable ones:
- two eggs - for one banana, mashed with a fork in a mashed mass;
- cow's milk - for coconut or soy.
If there are fears that chocolate is far from vegan, then you can replace it with ordinary dried fruits and get a whole new kind of gentle baking. The rest of the muffins are cooked in exactly the same way, and they taste just as good, but in some ways even better: they are not high-calorie.
It is believed that cupcakes of any kind are much tastier the next day, so it makes sense to bake more of them.