Chilli Choc Chip Muffins!

My regular readers will know that I a do try very hard to be as gluten-free as possible - it keeps my tummy fit and healthy. But I will admit that my one downfall is treats - biscuits, cookies and cakes in particular. So I have been playing around with some regular recipes, and converting them to gluten-free; and I must say, I am now quite the little baker...

Today I bring you an absolute favourite - Chilli Choc Chip Muffins!!

For your ingredients you will need:

225g Cooking Margarine (eg. Stork)
225g Caster Sugar
3 medium to large eggs
50ml Milk
225g Self Raising Flour*
1/2 teaspoon hot Chilli Powder**
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
2 heaped tablespoons Cocoa Powder
150g Plain Chocolate Chips

*I use Doves Farm White Self Raising Gluten Free flour, which is what I would recommend, and is widely available in many supermarkets, including Tesco - but you can try the recipe with other brands, or if gluten does not bother you, ordinary Self Raising will do just fine.

**The chilli powder is totally optional - these muffins are just as good without. It will give your muffins a little bit of bite, just enough to bring out the chocolate-iness of them. You do not want any more - it''ll blow your socks off!

Preheat your oven to 170 Centigrade.

Put your margarine into a large bowl, and beat as much as possible with a wooden spoon to warm and soften it.

Add the sugar, and mix in as much as possible with the wooden spoon. Scrape off the spoon and switch to a hand blender (your secret weapon for a light fluffy sponge!) - mixing on a low speed until you have a smooth cream.

Add the eggs one at a time, blending completely after each one -keeping your blender on a low speed!

Add in the milk (approx. 50ml roughly equivalent in volume to one egg), the chilli powder and the vanilla extract. Blend again with your blender. Once everything is mixed start increasing the speed gradually until you reach maximum. Continue blending until you have a light, smooth, fluffy mixture. Getting plenty of air into your mix is crucial to achieving a lovely light sponge.

Next add in the Cocoa Powder and half the flour. Stir this in with the blender tool, but without power - or you will get a good dusting! - and then mix completely with the blender on low speed.

Repeat for the remaining flour. When this is fully blended you can whack up the speed again on your blender and get as much air as possible into your sponge mix.

Finally, add your chocolate chips - sprinkle evenly over the mixture, and gently fold them in with a wooden spoon.

Divide your mix into your desired cake tray(s) and bake... you will only need about 2/3 the mixture in the tray to achieve the desired height/size - this mix will definitely rise!

My muffins are pretty deep (7 or 8cm) so I bake them for about 28 - 30 mins, but if you are using cup cake papers or a bun tray you may only need to bake them for about 15 - 18 minutes. Always time them initially for less time than you think they will take, you can always pop them back in for a couple of minutes longer!

Your muffins will be ready when they have slightly browned on top, and are "bouncy" to the touch! Alternatively, you can do the knife test - prod a thin blade right through the sponge, and if it pulls out clean your cakes are cooked - if it has mixture stuck to it, they need a little longer.

These muffins are perfect just as they are, however if you are creative with an icing bag there are countless ways you pretty them up - or you may wish to serve them warm with whipped cream or ice cream.... mmmMM! 

Enjoy!

Bad Blogger!

It has to be said, I have been such a lax blogger recently. Is it any excuse to say that I have been very busy?
Or that my lovely husband dropped my laptop, so it had to go to *hospital* (back fully repaired now, thankfully) ?

Well, I have sat down today and sketched out a schedule for the next couple of months... I just hope I keep to it! My next post - later this week - will be about a fabulous lady and her amazing response to help the poor independent traders who fell victim to the recent riots across England. And then this coming Sunday it will be my monthly Sunday Bookworm post - I can't believe another whole month has whizzed by so quickly! This month's book is Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson - so for any of you who became fans of this talented writer through watching the recent Case Studies dramatisations on the BBC, I hope you will enjoy hearing about this great book.

I also have plans to bring you some great wedding related features - hoping to introduce you to some different ideas to make your special day truly unique, and some gorgeous vintage (ahh, I do love a bit of vintage!) details, accessories and decorations, as well as a few do-it-yourself ideas for saving a few pennies. I will continue to post my occasional recipes, gluten free cakes and treats - that taste even better than the wheat varieties, so your wheat eating friends will, quite frankly, never know the difference!

Here is just a small sneak preview of my next recipe...

In between these posts I will resurrect my Folksy Fridays, fortnightly posts featuring all sorts of handmade gorgeousness from the talented makers as Folksy.com. As well as bringing you news of my own new products, creations and business ventures... and there are some very exciting new developments coming soon (some of which I just can't reveal yet!!)!

So I do hope you are going to continue to watch this space, and thank you for hanging around !

Scrumptious Gluten Free Biscuits...

...well they're a kind of a cross between a cake, a biscuit and a cookie! Whatever, they are lovely, and wonderful if you have a sweet tooth like me, but need to be gluten free (like me!).

Ingredients:

225g Cooking Margarine (eg. Stork)
110g Caster Sugar
Vanilla Essence to taste
250g Doves Farm* Gluten & Wheat Free Plain Flour
50g Ground Almonds**
Seedless Raspberry Jam

*I use this brand of gluten free flour in all my baking, only because it is easy to get hold of and, although more expensive than regular flour, does not cost and arm and a leg... you are welcome to try with your own preferred brand - results may vary!!

**The addition of ground almonds helps to keep the cooked biscuits soft - without them they tend to be a bit brittle or dry (a common result for gluten free flour) if you don't want to use any almonds then use 275g of flour.

Preheat your oven to a moderate temperature... I set mine at 160 Centigrade as it is a fan assisted oven and is prone to being "hot" but if you are not sure about your own, try 170 degrees first time and adjust from there.

OK, let's get baking...

Cream the margarine with a wooden spoon until soft and gooey (technical term), add the sugar and cream again.

Add the vanilla essence (only if you like, it's not essential).

Weigh in half the flour. Note: most recipes say to sift flour when baking - I don't bother... bit of a faff, and I don't think this flour needs it anyway as it is very "slippery" (another technical term!).

Mix with wooden spoon until smooth, weigh in the rest of the flour, and mix again until you have a "dough".
(The mixture should be pretty stiff, this helps to keep the biscuits shape during cooking, and prevent spreading.)

Now for the fun bit...

You can simply mould the dough into biscuit shapes with your fingers (they do not tend to rise or spread, so make them the size you want to eat them!); but this is what I like to do...

I fit a large spiky nozzle into a piping bag, and spoon the mixture into this.

I then pipe out my biscuits as swirls - starting in the middle, working out and then up to create a "well".

(You will need strong hands for the piping bit, the stiff mixture is easy to shape, but less easy to squeeze!)

Then comes the jammie bit. I use seedless raspberry - purely because I hate seeds in my jam, and my local supermarket do their own cheap brand - you use whatever you like best! Just splodge a good amount into the centre well of each biscuit (approx 1/2 a rounded teaspoon per biscuit).

Bake your biscuits for approximately 16 mintues, or until they just begin to go slightly golden on the edges... again, exact timing will depend on your oven.

Transfer to a cooling rack as soon as they are cool enough to handle.

Et voila!

My jam has splurged a bit in these ones - it was the runny bit at the end of the jar, but I'm sure yours will look a lot neater!

Variations:

If you like coconut - try only 25g of almonds, but add in 50g of dessicated coconut, keeping the quantity of flour the same.

Instead of vanilla you could use cinnamon or ginger to flavour your biscuits... you may want to hold off on the jam though!

If you feel like spoiling your dog - make a couple with peanut butter instead of jam... he will "woof" them down!

10 things I have learned this week...

They say you learn something everyday... well, you certainly do! It may not be earth-shattering, or highly intricate or academic - but KNOWLEDGE IS POWER !! I'm not quite sure how empowered I am feeling by these realisations though...

1.  You may follow knitting patterns to the stitch, but they won't necessarily turn out like the picture on the front.

2.  Using plain flour instead of self-raising flour, and forgetting to add any baking powder, will definitely lead to a flat stodgy sponge - but the dog WILL still eat it.

3.  There are dishonest sellers on Ebay that go bonkers when you point out their deceptions - but you CAN embarrass them into a partial refund, especially when their feedback score depends upon it.

4.  Not all hospital procedures are necessarily as painful as you think they are going to be - so there really is no need to be scared.

5. I really can kill a houseplant without even trying.

6.  The world does not stop if you don't Tweet for 24 hours.

7.  My cat does NOT like trout?! Or yoghurt.

8.  Palm wax is truly beautiful - and is absolutely the way to go.

9.  Apparently elephants are the only mammal with 4 knees... yes, really.

10. Strangely, I have realised that I have a strong desire to become an Estate Agent.


I am taking active steps to realise this last revelation - but I'm not entirely sure how useful I will find the previous 9 !!

Christmas leftovers take on a life of their own...

Christmas? Christmas?!  The festive season seems to be such a dim and distant memory already... for most people... Not here at Chez Lime, where we are still battling with leftover Christmas goodies.  As usual we bought in far too much - I blame all that snow for making us believe we had to stock pile!  We are making good progress though - we are down to the last few chocolates, only the toffees are left in the Quality Street tin and I put the last of the Pringles out of their misery yesterday.  Mind you, we still have nuts.  Nuts.  That great traditional Christmas nibble we all buy, but rarely eat...

But have you heard about my mini gingerbread men?

Well, I set about a baking frenzy on Christmas Eve, and after the Oatie Biscuits and the Chocolate Brownies, I unearthed the mini gingerbread men cutters that I had bought just because they were so cute, and sought out a recipe on the internet... It said it makes "about 20" - that's regular sized ones, so I didn't think to adjust the quantities... Mistake!

140 (yes, ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY) little men later I gave up... Yes, I did waste a little of the dough, but come on, enough is enough!

So we ate as many of them as we could, but I think they may have been breeding!  The little blighters are getting everywhere...

This one was discovered having a nice hot bubble bath....

This one is wondering where he is going to keep his pocket money...

I caught these two naughty boys at the Christmas brandy!

And this very brave little chap has challenged the last mince pie...

...who has crumbled under the pressure!!

Anyway, for now they have been rounded up and are safely contained - poor things are exhausted after their adventures - but I'm sure they will be up to more tricks soon!

If you would like to make an army of mini gingerbread men, or even just a few regular sized ones, this is the recipe I used:

(sorry, I can't acknowledge, I didn't keep the link!)

350g Plain flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp cinnamon

100g soft margarine

175g soft brown sugar

1 egg

4 tbsp golden syrup

Rub the margarine into the flour, bicarb and spices, add the sugar, then the egg and syrup and need together to make a dough.  Roll out and cut as desired.  Bake at 190 for 10 to 15 minutes depending on the size of your biscuit...

I used gluten free self raising flour instead of the regular plain flour and bicarb, and this seemed to work OK - and you could use treacle instead of syrup and/or dark brown sugar if you want a richer taste.  Alternatively if you don't like ginger, swap the spices of good old vanilla essence.

Have fun!