A little break from the Christmas recipes: Muffins/cupcakes for every-day use

It seems the line between what counts as a muffin and what as a cupcake is blurry. The dictionary tells me that muffins are sweet breads, leavened with baking powder or baking soda and baked in cup-shaped tins, while cupcakes are cakes leavened and baked in the same way.

I suppose the following – my own recipe – falls somewhere in between the two. It is a cake recipe, but I have added a bread ingredient: whole-wheat flour.

Basic recipe:
1 cup flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 egg
50 g margarine or butter, melted
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
Enough milk to make a thick batter, usually about 2/3 cup

12 paper muffin cups
1 12 muffin baking tray (mine came from Ikea)

Mix flour, sugar and baking powder in a bowl. Add egg, milk, vanilla and melted margarine and stir into a thick batter. Put paper muffin forms into the cups in the baking tray and fill each to 2/3 full with batter. Bake at 190°C (180°C if you have a convection oven), for about 20-30 minutes, or until the cakes are golden and a pin stuck in one of them comes out clean. These cakes are moist, delicious and not too sweet, and will keep for several days.

Cooled muffins can be spread with lemon or cocoa icing.

Variations:

Berry muffins:
1 cup berries, may be frozen (I love bilberry muffins, but mixed wild berries are also good in muffins)

Fill each muffin cup to 1/3 full with batter. Divide the berries evenly between the cups and top with the rest of the batter.

White muffins with chocolate chips:
1/2 to 1 cup chocolate chips, depending on how rich you want the muffins to be.

Fold gently into the batter and prepare as indicated in the basic recipe.

Double chocolate muffins:
Make dough with 3 tbs dark cocoa powder and ½ cup chocolate chips, white, dark or mixed.

Jam muffins:
Fill each muffin cup to 1/3 full with batter. Put a teaspoon of your favourite jam in the centre of each blob of batter and top with the rest of the batter.

Cinnamon muffins:
Mix together 1/2 cup sugar and 2 tsp powdered cinnamon and sprinkle on top of the batter before you bake the muffins.

Cinnamon-raisin muffins:
Add 1/2 cup raisins to the batter and top with cinnamon-sugar before baking.

They taste even better the day after you make them.

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