Ever had a muffcake?
I remember B left a comment way back when on my Coconut & Cinnamon Celebration Muffins, saying 'seeing as they're half muffin, half cupcake, shouldn't they be called muffcakes?'. And I totally loved it, thought it was the cutest name. More recently, the hilarious and adorable Catty from thecattylife.com, made some muffcakes too, and her video had me rolling on the floor with laughter at her hesitation before she said the word 'muffcake' for the first time.
I think it's totally adorable, so, dear readers, my question is: what's in a word? And what do you think of 'muffcakes'? Well, actually, before you decide, maybe you should try this recipe first.
After last week's nearly monochrome lamingtons, plus now that we're in the depth of winter proper, I decided I really needed some colour in my life and on this blog, so I got myself some gorgeous orange and red ranunculi and befriended yet another lovely flower lady in the process at this rate I'm hoping to get free flowers for life!. It's really the little, simple things in life that make me happy, like flowers, cake, sunshine or a really good book.
Speaking of which, I've just finished reading Dan Brown's latest 'The Lost Symbol' and I loved it. Obviously it was nothing too deep, just a very good page-turner, which is what Dan Brown is good at really. What are you reading, dear readers? Anything interesting or fun? What was the last great book you read? Please do share as I'm always on the lookout for great books.
I'd been craving orange and poppyseed muffins for some time now, but only had an orange and poppyseed cake recipe. I didn't see why it shouldn't just as easily work as muffins, with the addition of some passion fruit I had lying around, and thus these muffcakes were born.
Orange, passion fruit & poppyseed muffcakes recipe
(for a printable version of this recipe, click HERE)
Makes 12 muffcakes
For the batter:
225g butter
225g (1 cup) caster sugar
275g (2 1/3 cup) plain flour
3 eggs
250ml (1 cup) milk
75g (1/2 cup) poppy seeds
2 level tsps baking powder
Juice and grated rind of two oranges
Juice of two passion fruit (strain juice through a jelly net)
Lemon icing:
125g (1 cup) icing sugar
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp water
1. Preheat conventional oven to 170˚C. Mix butter, sugar and orange rind in a bowl with an electric mixer.
2. Add the eggs one by one and mix in thoroughly.
3. Mix in the poppy seeds, milk, flour, baking powder, passion fruit juice and orange juice. Add some extra milk or juice if the batter is too dry.
4. Fit a muffin tray with muffin cases and spoon the batter into the
cases. Place in the oven and bake for roughly 45 minutes. Test with a
metal skewer, if the skewer comes out clean, the muffcakes are ready. Allow to cool
before icing.
5. For the icing, mix the icing sugar with the water and lemon juice into a thick paste. Spoon generously over the muffcakes.
