Raspberry and white chocolate muffins, for my parents

My parents have been in Victoria since last Wednesday, in order to attend my grandmother's funeral and spend time with my Dad's family. With them leaving half way through one work week, arriving back just in time to leap into the next, and not travelling for the most enjoyable of reasons...well, I wanted to give them something nice to return home to.

Flowers and fruit was one component.

These muffins were the other.

They are adapted from The Australian Women's Weekly 'Muffins' cookbook. I can't recall when I bought the book (the price on the front says $3.85, which suggests it was long enough ago for inflation to have hit!) but it has been very well used over the years, and I have made these muffins a number of times.

The cover image is even of the original white chocolate and berry muffin that inspired today's product:

I don't usually post recipes directly from books, but as there are many, many raspberry and white chocolate muffin recipes out there, and the muffins I made didn't follow the recipe exactly, I thought I would make an exception today.

Raspberry and White Chocolate Muffins

Adapted from The Australian Women's Weekly 'Muffins' cookbook

Makes 12

Ingredients:

• 2 cups self-raising flour
• 2/3 cup white sugar
• 2/3 cup finely chopped white chocolate (if you wanted these to be vegan, you could use Sweet Williams dairy free white chocolate. I had intended to do this but the supermarket I visited when buying ingredients didn't stock it!)
• 1 egg (I actually used egg replacer because I so rarely buy / use eggs)
• 125g butter, melted (I used nuttelex)
• 150g plain or vanilla yoghurt (I used soy vanilla)
• 1 tbsp water
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 1 cup frozen raspberries

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 200'C (400'F) and prepare at 12-pan muffin tray.

2. Combine flour, sugar and chopped chocolate in a large bowl.

3. In a smaller bowl, combine melted butter, egg (or egg replacer), yoghurt, vanilla essence and the tablespoon water.

4. Add the wet mixture into the dry and stir to combine. Add the raspberries and stir through.

5. Spoon mixture into prepared pan and bake for 20 minutes.

I usually dislike white chocolate, but even I enjoy it in these muffins. There's something about the flavour combinations and the pairing of berry and white chocolate that works incredibly well.

Amongst other things, the original recipe calls for buttermilk and not yoghurt, uses multiple types of berry, and suggests pressing berries into the top of the muffins rather than mixing them through the batter. I've made it the original way and with several variations and the end result always turns out well.

 Not having used this book since I started experimenting with vegan baking, I am now motivated to go through and re-create other recipes without eggs or dairy. I think it will be rather a fun process...

Do you have a favourite baking recipe, or one that can always be relied upon?

Tweet

Pin It