Tamarillo Muffins

Finally, back to Kitchen Notes after more than one month busy with traveling work... went out to Sulawesi and Papua for 3 weeks, returned back to Jakarta for a couple days, left to Sumatra for another 5 days, back again to Jakarta for one day before flying to Kalimantan on the following day. Now in Jakarta again, but still have to leave soon for Surabaya and Lombok island. Well, I am looking forward to have a long holiday at the end of the year thou...

Between my Papua and Sumatra trips, I baked this Tamarillo Muffin. Well, I am a bit confuse on its name... cupcakes or muffins. I simply mixed all the ingredients as in muffins recipe, but it has a moist and soft consistency like cupcakes. This tamarillo muffin quickly becomes one of my favorite. I love the sweet and tangy flavor from the tamarillos.

Digging into my old "gray area" inside my head, my earliest experience in cooking was when I was about 8 years old. At that time, a cousin from my mother side lived with us and she took a good care of us. One day, she cooked Bolu Kukus (literally means steamed cake) for us. It's like cupcakes, only as its name it is steamed, not baked in the oven. Me and brother-G (he was about 10 years old) sat in the kitchen and watched how she made Bolu Kukus with flour, eggs, sugar, some vanilla extract, and we saw her took a bottle of soda drink from the shelf and pour some into the batter she was making at the end of the process. I remember how excited we were because we loved Bolu Kukus, which has a spongecake-like soft texture. We closely stood next to her while she beat some eggs with sugar, carefully mixed in some flour and vanilla extract and poured the batter into small tin-cups lined with parchment paper. We watched her put them in a steamer, then half an hour later, we were the first who enjoyed eating the warm Bolu Kukus, deliciously fresh and soft. I couldn't remember how many we ate.. but I remember that both of us still wanted more. So we decided to make our own Bolu Kukus. We could remembered the ingredients, and we have seen how it was made... just mix all the ingredients together in a bowl, devide into those small cups...simple! Ha ha!! that was from children's eyes and minds. So we thought we could make one. There we were, made a plan on when we could discreetly cook our Bolu Kukus. Of course we had to choose a time where nobody would disturb us or knew about our plan cause we wanted all (yeah, ALL!) the Bolu Kukus just for the two of us. We simply didn't want to share.. The perfect time came in the evening on the following day, where our parents went out for a party and everybody had gone to their rooms. It was around 9 or 10 pm... the kitchen's lamp has already been switched off. There we were... eagerly working to have the Bolu Kukus of our own. We even used a mixer to mix all the ingredients we could remember... just as what our cousin did before. But of course we didn't take the "how" and "how much" into account. Pour one bottle of soda drink into the mixture simply because we like soda drink, stirred all together and tasted it to see if it was sweet enough. Then into the small cups and into the steamer. Half an hour later... we checked and it was still liquid!! we thought: hmmm..., maybe it needs more time to steam. Another 30 minutes passed and it still was a liquid. Well, definitely we did it wrong, but we couldn't figure out what (now I know, we pour in to much soda on our batter). Then an idea came to me: since it tasted pretty good why not put them in the freezer so we could have ice cups. So, there we were... have some ice-cups in the morning. Of course, since those ice-cups were not as good as Bolu Kukus we didn't mind sharing with our sisters and brother.

So, back to tamarillo muffins. What is tamarillo? Tamarillo or Tree Tomato is in the same genus/familly  with tomato and eggplant. OK, these are the pictures to best describe how they look like, and a wiki-link for this fruit if you want to know more.

Tamarillo has a quite tangy taste, which I like a lot. I bought a lot of Tamarillos from Wamena during my Papua trip. Back in Jakarta, I quickly made this Tamarillo Muffin before going for another trip, and took some pictures for the blog. For these recipe and to be stored in freezer, I simply halfed the tamarillos and scooped out the flesh with a spoon. But if you want a nice shape of frozen tamarillos, you can peel the skin using the technique for peeling tomatoes, before freezing them. 

For the Tamarillo Muffin :

8 tamarillos, peeled or scooped out from its skin

1 cup of all purpose flour 

1/3 cup of caster sugar

2 eggs, lightly beaten in a small bowl

1/3 cup of heavy cream

2 tsp of baking powder

1/4 tsp of salt

Preheat the oven to 180 Celcius degree.

Cut the tamarillos in chunks, put aside.

Mix all the dry ingredients in a big bowl (flour, sugar, baking powder and salt).

Combine the heavy cream and the eggs and pour into the dry ingredients. Incorporate well using a wooden spoon or a spatula.

Add the tamarillo chunks into the batter and mix so every part will have tamarillo chunks in it.

Pour into cupcakes paper-cups or into a muffin-tray lined with papercups or parchment paper.

Bake in the oven for 30 minutes.

Served hot or cold with the cream sauce

Notes: Keep in an air-tight container and freeze up to one month.

For the Cream Sauce

250 ml heavy cream
100 g caster sugar
2 tbsp of brandy (or any liquor you like)

In a bowl, stir the heavy cream with sugar and brandy until the sugar disolved.
Then put the bowl over a bigger bowl filled with water and ice cubes, and continue beating to thicken