The Great February Muffin Feud

The next installment of the Matt and Hayley Bake-off took place today.

This time, the challenge was to make 12 muffins, involving chocolate in some way, shape or form.

I'm really interested in the idea of chilli and chocolate, so I thought i'd make some sort of chilli chocolate combination. A search through my cook books found a recipe for Mexican Chocolate Cupcakes from the Cox Cookies and Cake book. This book was bought for me by a friend ages ago and I hadn't had a chance to make anything from it, so i was really keen to go ahead and have a go at one of the recipes. It's a really stylish book with a sense of humour and a lot of glitter!

I used 1 and a half quantities to adjust for muffins... And the result was, well, pretty spectacular to be honest:

The taste of these muffins is truly amazing... They are definitely the best muffins I have ever made. The muffin mixture contains cinnamon and nutmeg, and the chocolate buttercream contains cayenne pepper.

The independent judge this time was Lisa, Newcastle's Clandestine Cake Club organiser. Who better to ask to judge a muffin contest? So, we took the pictures, and we sent them to her, and she (very slowly and dramatically) reached her decision. Would it be muffin 1 (which I knew to be Matt's effort) or my muffin 2 (I must admit to feeling confident, but what if Lisa wasn't a fan of chilli?!)

Before I tell you who won, here are some more pictures of my effort:

Lovely rich, squidgy moist inside

And here are some pictures of Matt's muffins, which were chocolate muffins with a chocolate topping:

Note the slightly dry texture... explanation to follow

Lovely precise decoration.

It turns out that somehow, Matt managed to forget to put any butter into his cake mixture, hence the rather dry-looking texture.

And so, the results came in and it turned out that my muffins won, so I am the muffin queen. I am slowly but surely starting to claw back my self respect following the cheesecake debacle and loser pie episode.

Muffins!

Hello all,

Had a lovely holiday, thank you very much. I have returned with quite a serious addiction to olives and feta cheese, however. It was very quiet, as most things were closed in Malia with it being off-season, but we found ways to amuse ourselves, including visiting Knossos to hunt for the minotaur.

Last weekend i was down in London to see The Boyf, so we decided to do a spot of baking. I haven't made muffins for ages, so we thought we would whip up a couple of batches. Everything that Boyf bakes appears to need to contain chocolate, and lots of it, so we settled on double chocolate chunk muffins, and i demanded to make Nigella's divine snickers and peanut butter muffins as well.

We had to go shopping for ingredients and everything. For some reason i was slightly disappointed at the fact that London branches of Tesco are the same as North East ones, as if the south is a whole other country. My style of shopping usually consists of meandering about slowly looking at everything new and being seduced by shiny, brightly coloured packaging. I established  that alas, this is not how The Boyf shops at all (go directly to aisle required, select item, that is all)

We used this recipe for the double chocolate chunk muffins. The cinnamon was an odd addition, and initially we feared it was going to be a bit overpowered but the finished article was yummy.

Meanwhile (as The Boyf sloooowly and precisely measured out exact amounts of muffin mixture to go into each muffin cup, bless him), i made a start on the snickers and peanut butter muffins. I made these years ago from Nigella's How to be a Domestic Goddess, and they were amazing, and got rave reviews from those who tried them (including the staff in my local salon, who would regularly tell me how wonderful they were in a subtle hint kind of a way). Anyway, as you will probably know by now, I do have a serious peanut butter addiction, so these muffins are a joy for me.

There will be more baking this weekend, so expect more posts. It will involve more chocolate, yay!

In other news, the arrangements for Private Pie are coming along nicely. Will let you know as things develop further.

Hayley xxx