There are some days when my hands itch to bake and this was a special week because I had found a special sieve. An old fashioned jug like sieve with a lever attached to the handle that when pressed would sieve the flour. It looked all excited when I saw this sieve in a movie (the hours) sometime back. But it's after the baking that I realized that this sieve was tough to clean. Well it atleast gave me the opportunity to try these muffins out. I picked this recipe from a book I got from a sale in London.
It cost me 99p and I was super excited to own a book on muffins and cupcakes. It's a collection of 100 recipes with daily easy to bake recipes and recipes for special occassion. This book has been lying around untouched for 9 months and this is the first recipe that I actually tried. I was out of vanilla essence ( can you believe I finished all the 3 bottles in the past 2 months) and I had very little nutmeg powder- two ingredients the book mentioned. I substituted vanilla with orange essence one of the best ones I have from London again !!! and for nutmeg I used the not- so- well ground stock I had in store as a home remedy for stomach pain.
Let me also remind you these doughnut muffins don't taste like doughnuts they are more of cake doughnut flavour and now that you have imagined how that would taste, add the orange and nutmeg flavours and that's what these doughnuts turned out to be. I baked 18 of them though the recipe said it yields 12. It's quite simple and lasted a week for breakfast and snack times. I am looking forward to more recipes from this book but till then savour these........please...........
Ingredients for Doughnut muffins
Butter- 175 g
Caster Sugar- 200 g
Eggs-2 , lightly beaten
Flour- 375 g
Baking powder- 1/4 tbsp
Baking soda- 1/4 tsp
Salt- a pinch
Milk- 250ml
Grated nutmeg- 1/2 tsp
Directions
Grease the muffins trays.Beat the butter and sugar in a bowl. Add sugar little by little and not all together.
Add the whisked eggs into the creamed mixture and beat well. Sieve the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and nutmeg in another bowl. Fold half of the sieved flour to the creamed mix and the rest of the flour to the milk. Use a hand beater and mix the cream mixture and flour nicely.
Now add the flour and milk mixture and mix well. Preheat the oven at 180 degrees , spoon the batter into the tray and bake the muffins for 20-25 minutes till the top browns.
The recipe suggested a topping with powdered cinnamon and caster sugar dusted over the buttered muffin top. I did not do this because I wanted it to last for few days and unless one finishes the whole lot immediately the topping would be a waste. If you are averse to nutmeg and love cinnamon add cinnamon to the muffin batter.
