White Chocolate Muffins for a Sweet Treat

Posted on June 8, 2018 by Our Growing Paynes

Oh blogger’s block! We’ve all been there. This week, with us getting ready to go across the pond and the school year coming to a close, my mind was blank. Crickets! I try to plan a week ahead but nothing came to me. The other night we were watching the Great British Bake Off. Sadly not the one with Mary Berry. Sorry to say but Pru is not Mary Berry! But it finally sparked inspiration.

I have one of Mary Berry’s baking books, “Baking with Mary Berry”. She has a recipe for white chocolate and strawberry muffins which calls for strawberry jam. I had my strawberry rhubarb jam in the fridge so I thought this would be fun to make for the kids.

This is a very easy recipe to make, in fact most of it’s done by the time the oven is preheated at 400F/200C.

The recipe calls for 2 1/2 cups of self rising flour. If you don’t have that it is easy to make it. Add 1 1/2 tsp of baking powder and 1/2 tsp of salt per cup of flour. Sift all together and you are off and running. I had to prep this and also melted 7 tablespoons of butter.

In the mixer bowl add 2 large eggs, beat them. Then add the butter, a cup/8 oz of milk. I used full fat milk here. Next add 2 tsp of vanilla and 2/3 cup of sugar. Tip in the flour mixture then blend everything until it’s smooth and incorporated. Once it’s mixed add 100g of white chocolate chips. Mix well.

Line a 12 well muffin tin with paper cups. Spoon in half the batter divided equally between the 12 cups. Spoon in a bit of jam in each cup.

With the remaining batter cover each muffin evenly.

Bake 25-30 minutes until they are golden and pass the toothpick test. Allow to cool then dust with confectioners’ sugar.

I found this in the breakfast chapter but I think this would be a bit sweet to start the day with. After school snack? Perfect. 🙂 This would also work with a variety of fruit jams so the sky is the limit.

Custard Biscuits with Strawberry Rhubarb Jam

Posted on May 11, 2018 by Our Growing Paynes

With the spring properly here now we are enjoying the fresh flavours that come with the warmer weather. Our garden is coming along with the busy bees arriving to enjoy the blooms. Our gooseberry and black currant bushes are a hive of activity which is wonderful. The garden makes a happy place for the bees and butterflies. Need to work on plants to invite along the hummingbirds.

One of my favourite flavours growing up was strawberry and rhubarb. My mum would make a divine strawberry and rhubarb pie that I loved. I wanted to bake something that would include that delicious combination. I was flipping through the “Sweet” book by Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh and found a recipe for Custard Yo-Yos that had a rhubarb icing. I thought I would do a strawberry and rhubarb jam instead for the filling.

Make the jam first to give it time to cool. Use a ratio of 1:1 for the strawberry and rhubarb.

In a small saucepan add the fruit and a bit of water so the fruit doesn’t catch as you bring it to a simmer. Add brown sugar a bit at a time until you get the flavour and thickness desired. You do want this on the thick side so it doesn’t drip too much out of the biscuit sandwich.

Preheat the oven to 350F/180C

In a mixer bowl sift together 175g/1 1/3 cups of all purpose flour, 65g/1/2 cup custard powder, 65g/1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar, and 1/8 teaspoon of salt. If you don’t have custard powder ( 🙁 ) you can use cornstarch (cornflour) but it won’t be much of a custard biscuit without the custard! I like using Bird’s custard powder. One because it’s good and two it’s what we can easily find. Cube 170g/3/4 cup of unsalted butter that is at room temperature. Add it to the mixer bowl.

Blend on low until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Next add 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla extract. If you had to use corn starch then make it 1/2 a teaspoon. At this point you will probably be wondering, as I was, how on earth was this dry mixture going to come together. Have no fear! The butter starts it’s job with the vanilla. Start on low then speed up to medium to bring the dough together. It will take 30-60 seconds to happen.

Line your baking sheet with parchment paper. Roll balls of dough of about an 1 inch/2.5-3cm. Place the balls about 1 1/2in/4cm apart.

Dust a fork with flour and press into the tops of the balls. Don’t go all the way through! Just go about halfway.

Bake for 25 minutes. If you use more than one baking sheet, rotate them halfway through. You want the biscuits dry on the bottom and slightly golden. Leave them on the sheet for a couple of minutes then transfer them to a cooling rack.

When the biscuits and jam are cool make sandwiches.

There is nothing like custard with strawberry and rhubarb. Definitely flavours of the beautiful warmer weather.

Chocolate Strawberry Cupcakes with Chambord White Chocolate Ganache

Posted on March 8, 2018 by Our Growing Paynes

Winter is back though fortunately not with the vengeance that was predicted. At least in our area. It was predicted we’d get 8-14in/20-35cm. While it is still snowing we’ll only get a third of that. Which is fine by us!

This was our view yesterday and I felt it was a good time to bake. The kids had early release from school in anticipation of the impending storm. Turns out the storm took it’s time to start and they could have gotten a whole day in.

Our daughter had won a kit for a strawberry chocolate cupcake mix which she made for a class in school. This sparked an idea for me to use real strawberries and to really make it posh I thought I’d make chambord white chocolate ganache.

I made the cupcakes using this chocolate cake recipe.

While the cupcakes were baking I made up the ganache. I adjusted the white chocolate ganache I made previously as I didn’t need a lot. I used 1/2 cup/4oz of cream, 1 tablespoon/1/2oz of butter and 4oz of white chocolate. When the cream and butter were heating up I added 3 tablespoons of chambord for flavour.

For the chocolate frosting I found an Allrecipes recipe. I had to alter it a bit as I didn’t have enough baking cocoa. So I cut the confectioner’s sugar to 2 1/2 cups rather than 2 3/4 cups as I had to use hot cocoa for the baking cocoa. The sugar high from these cupcakes was quite something!

Once all the ingredients are made it’s time to assemble. Cut a pyramid out of the cupcakes and insert the strawberry upside down and liberally drizzle the ganache over and around the strawberry.

Cut the tip off the pyramid and put the top back on the cupcake and frost the top of the cupcake.

The cupcake absorbs the ganache and makes it incredibly moist and flavourful. The strawberry is the only healthy bit of this sweet!

Strawberry Rhubarb Ginger Crumble, Now That’s a Mouthful!

Posted on June 22, 2014 by Our Growing Paynes

The past couple of days our strawberries have been coming in and they are so delicious. The netting over them has worked very well and the birds just have to do without! Unfortunately they weren’t ready for the crumble we made for Father’s Day so I had to buy the strawberries.

Conor Bofin recently posted a recipe for rhubarb crumble with ginger. As soon as our rhubarb was ready I was planning on doing a strawbery rhubarb crumble as crumble is a favourite in our house and our son loves to make the topping. Conor’s idea of adding ginger was a light bulb moment. Ginger goes so well with fruit so I had to add it to our recipe.

Even though our strawberries weren’t ready the co-op had some lovely organic ones.

Quarter a pound of strawberries and place them in a small pan on medium heat. As it starts to warm up add 1/3 cup of brown sugar. Stir well as this starts to simmer.

Grate fresh ginger over the strawberries. I used a chunk that was about 1 1/2″ all the way round. If you really like the bite of the ginger use more.

Simmer until it becomes a chunky jam. You don’t want the strawberries to disappear completely. Set aside and slice the rhubarb into half inch bits. I used 3 stalks for this.

Mix in with the strawberries and add to the baking dish. Preheat the oven to 375F/190C. Our son made the topping from the recipe in the Pillsbury The Complete Book of Baking. 1 cup of rolled oats, 3/4 cup all purpose flour, 3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar, and 1/2 cup of softened butter.

Bake for 25-35 minutes.

I was curious as to why the topping didn’t come out as golden as it usually did. We found out the sugar was left out! Oops. But hey he’s 9 and I figure it doesn’t hurt for him to see why all the ingredients are important. And I love the fact he wants to bake so I’m not stopping him! Plus we were serving it with ice cream. So we were fine.

Adding ginger was a hit and it really worked well with the ice cream.

Our Growing Paynes

A journey about cooking, traveling, gardening, and crafting.

Tag Archives: strawberry

White Chocolate Muffins for a Sweet Treat

Custard Biscuits with Strawberry Rhubarb Jam

Chocolate Strawberry Cupcakes with Chambord White Chocolate Ganache

Strawberry Rhubarb Ginger Crumble, Now That’s a Mouthful!