Rhubarb muffins

In my earlier post I think I happened to mention something of a muffin madness going on. Well, it wouldn't be muffin madness with just one muffin recipe. So here is muffin madness 2.0. Expect another instalment from the twisted workings of InvisiblePinkUni's mind shortly. 


You might also see a sub-theme to the muffin madness as this recipe contains another flavour of Whittard's white hot chocolate. According to their website, they have 18 flavours of hot chocolate and I will make it one of my targets of 2012 to try to apply each and every one of them in a baking recipe. With 8 more months to go this year, and 2 flavours already done, I'm left with only 2 flavours a month. Should be doable without a problem. If anyone want's to pop over to the InvisiblePinkLair for a cuppa, feel free, as I will soon be stocking an impressive selection of hot chocs.


The rhubarb preserve I'm using here is something I bought on my recent trip to Geneva. It's really good as it's not too sweet. And it's organic, and I do try to keep it organic as much as possible. And yes, I know fully well there is no scientific evidence for organic being better than "regular", but sometimes you just have to (gasp and horror) go with your gut feeling. The place I bought it from was called Le Pain Quotidien, and I just realised as I googled it, that they actually have cafes in London as well. This is bad bad news, as they had the most amazing pastries and cakes, including a macaroon the size of your palm. Yes it's true, I'm not making this up. And incidentally, I think I can see a trip to London coming up very soon.


And now that I have inflicted horrible psychological pain to everyone by making you read my ramblings, I'll move on to the main subject. Again, the muffin recipe is stolen from Kinuskikissa, the greatest baking blog out there.



Makes 6 big muffins, and leaves a bit so you can scrape the bowl and enjoy...

75 g butter
65 g caster sugar
1 egg
25 g Whittard's rhubarb white hot chocolate
115 g white flour
1 tsp baking powder
75 ml milk
rhubarb preserve

150 ml double cream
40 g Whittard's rhubarb white hot chocolate

The howto:
1. Preheat oven to 225 C.
2. Beat together butter and caster sugar until fluffy. Beat in the egg.
3. Mix dry ingredients, and sift into the butter/sugar/egg mix. This is where you should, in theory, carefully fold the mixture using a spatula. I just mix for a few seconds with the electric mixer... 
4. Add milk and mix.
5. Spoon some batter into muffin moulds or a tin (I prefer silicon moulds), add about half a teaspoon of rhubarb preserve and then top with more batter. Leave room in the moulds, as the mixture will rise quite a lot in the oven.
6. Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until they look done. 
7. Mix the hot chocolate powder into the double cream and whip. Pipe onto the muffins when they have cooled.


Each muffin (if you make 6 from the recipe above) is approximately 380 kcal (22g fat, 42.5g total carbs, 3.8g protein). Please note that the calorie contents are estimates only, and will vary depending on the ingredients you use. If you are as obsessed with calories as I am, I suggest you do your own calculations based on your specific ingredients. 

Verdict:
Could a muffin be anything but delicious? I think this would work perfectly well if you made the rhubarb preserve yourself by just cooking the fresh rhubarb in a small amount of water (with sugar added if you prefer). Although you would probably have to add some gelatin to keep it from being too runny. Maybe even just add raw rhubarb pieces, they might cook in the muffin? The whipped cream is a bit extravagant, and the muffins are divine without it, so for a healthier option, just leave it out. Or replace with some other topping if whipped cream is not your thing. I had to pop some of these in the freezer immediately after baking to keep me from ingesting all of them at once. I still have some rhubarb preserve left, so I might just have to make another batch some day soon.