Easy Muffins : Banana Muffins and Mango Muffins

Gedong Gincu Mango Muffins

First, I am sorry for not being able to write and update this blog in the last (ok, let me count...) 2 months... yes, in fact, more than 2 month!! Time flies. Doesn't mean I didn't cook thou. But not as many, since I spent most of my days traveling out of Jakarta for work. And the worst was.., from the only few cooking I did in between the trips, I kept forgetting to take pictures before I ate them or gave them away to friends and family. This time, I am going to share what I learned about muffins.

Banana Muffins with Coconut Milk and Palm Sugar

Muffins...

Easy and fast, require only one big bowl, one smaller bowl, one spatula, measuring cups and spoons... that's all! and you can have endless combination of flavors in about 40 minutes. Ten minutes of measuring and mixing, and 30 minutes of baking (20 minutes if you make mini muffins).

I tried to simplify the recipes, with only few basic ingredients so you can have almost freedom for adding the flavor you prefer. I hope you find it useful, and give you more confidence to cook muffins without recipe. Well, actually, not really without recipe.. all you have to do is remembering the two big rules about muffins : flour/baking powder ratio and flour/liquid ratio. Then you can add other ingredients according to your taste preference.

 

 Gedong Gincu Mango Muffins, so much flavor in one bite...

However, with different combination of fruits, nuts, or other flavors, you might need to adjust the ratio. Some people have their own standard on how the perfect muffins should be, the batter and the muffins' consistency, etc. But if you are like me, who is baking simply for fun and enjoy your friends and family eating your muffins with fun, then you can try my principles in baking muffins.

Baking powder

It's the key. You can't make muffins without baking powder. It's the leavening agent so muffins will be softer, lighter, crumble, with the airier texture. If you use self-rising flour, forget the baking powder and forget the ration of flour/baking powder also, since self-rising flour already contains baking powder.

In general, use 1 - 2 tsp baking powder for every cup of flour.

Flour

I use low protein flour (cake flour) or simply use all-purpose flour. Do not use bread flour. For muffins, we want to avoid gluten.

Other type of starch such as whole wheat, rolled oats, etc. can be used also.

Liquids

Usually there are several kinds of liquid used for muffins

• Milk / yoghurt / butter milk / heavy cream / water
• Oil / melted butter
• Eggs
• Or sometimes you might want to use honey to sweeten your muffins

The flour/liquid ratio, or the final dough consistency... not too liquid, yet not too stiff is important too. Hmm, how can I give the right description so you would know and understand. Hmmm..., let me think.

Well, describing consistency is apparently much harder than I thought. Well, it should be like a sticky dough. If you prefer a moist muffin, then you can add a little bit more liquid. In general, 1.5 cups of flour for 2.5 cups of liquids. Adjust the ratio according to the other ingredient or flavor you use.

 

Sweetness and/or saltiness

For sweetness, usually I use granulated sugar... could be white sugar, brown sugar, palm sugar, or any other granulated sugar. Sometimes I prefer honey in a certain recipe, so I count the honey to the total liquid. But for granulated sugar, I do not count it for the total dry ingredient... only flour counts.

To balance the sweetness, it's better to add a pinch of salt to the mixture. Don't forget to adjust the amount of sugar if you make muffins with fresh fruits that have high sugar content (mango, cherries, etc.) or candied/glazed fruits. Usually, I use 1/4 - 1/3 cup of sugar for every cup of flour. For savory muffins, use only 1-2 tablespoon of sugar for every cup of flour.

Flavors

Always keep in mind the water content in whatever flavor you choose for your muffins, especially for fresh fruits. Different fruits have different water contain. Usually, softer fruit (strawberry, ripe peach, pineapple, mango, papaya, fresh orange, berries, pineapple, cherries, etc.) has more water, so adjust the total liquid a little bit. No adjustment if you use dried fruit (raisins, sultanas, dried plum, dried cranberry, etc.), even after you soak and strain them).

Nuts are often mixed in for flavor and for giving nice texture in muffins.

For salty flavors, use cheeses, bacon, meat, etc. Simply reduce the sugar as I mentioned before.

Mixing method

Actually, there are several mixing method for muffins. But for this time, I will use the easiest method.

Mix well the dry ingredients in a bigger bowl, and wet ingredients in a smaller bowl. Then pour the liquid into the dry mixture. 

If you use fresh fruit, nuts, cheese, etc. as flavoring, mix them in to the dry ingredient just before pouring the liquid in or at the same time with the liquid.

Using spatula or wooden spoon, mix just to combine. Do not over-mix, or the gluten will formed and you will not get a soft cake-like muffins.

Now go ahead and make your muffins experiment with whatever flavor you like.

Or, if you want to try some of my recipe: Banana Muffins with Coconut Milk and Palm Sugar, and Mango Muffins...

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. 

Spinach and Cheese Muffins

Inspired by Yuni, my sister A's friend, with her delicious Bolognese Muffin recipe, for two weeks I have been thinking of baking a different savory muffin. Finally, it hit my cooking mood in one Saturday morning when my niece P stayed over. Quickly checked the fridge on what were laying there, my eyes were set on a bunch of spinach and a piece of gruyere cheese. That would be our breakfast. Spinach and Gruyere Cheese Muffins.

You can substitute the spinach with other leafy vegetable and substitute the gruyere with other type of cheese of your choice. My sister A (P's mother) likes it better with cheddar cheese.