10.03.2007

low maintenance

before i decided that i needed to cook, and especially before i decided that i needed to blog about cooking, most of my meals were fairly low maintenance. i pride myself on being a low maintenace girl (in general life), so it really only made sense that english muffins with a little butter and mozzarella qualified as dinner in my book... or that cereal was mostly eaten at 7pm instead of 7am...

so this next recipe - its simple, not fancy... there are no funny stories, no little ancedotes about how i screwed it up... the fact of the matter is, i had recently bought a new loaf pan and wanted to break it in. that little betty crocker fall baking book that i'd gotten on that last target trip (see pear thingies) had a recipe for Chai Spiced Bread and it looked really good. and they listed prep time as 15 mins.






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while i know you can drink chai tea any time of the year, i do associate it more with fall & winter. and even though NYC is the new SoCal and its been 78 and sunny for the last million days, i really wanted to welcome october with something a little more... well, fallish.


It turned out that i didnt have enough butter to make the full loaf, but i also have a few mini muffin pans that are so cute and i love to make cute little things in them... and mini muffins are easier to bring into work...

so 1/2 of the recipe worked out perfectly.


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Chai Spiced Muffins
Courtesy of Betty Crocker - Fall Baking (doubling of the butter & other slight modifications by me)
Click here to import recipe directly into Pepperplate

muffins:
3/8 c sugar
1/2 c butter (1 stick, pref. unsalted), softened*

1/4 c prepared tea (i used chai. it made sense)
1/6 c light cream (i actually just poured until the tea + the cream made 1/3 c, which is slightly more than 1/6 c of cream.)
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg

1 c flour
1 tsp baking powder
3/8 tsp cardamom
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
1/16 tsp ground cloves

***

Heat oven to 400°. Prepare minimuffin pan by spraying with cooking spray for baking

beat sugar and butter until light and fluffy (med speed).
beat in tea, cream, vanilla & egg (low speed).
the resulting mix will look gross and curdled. thats fine.

whisk all dry ingredients together - flour, baking powder, cardamom, salt, cinnamon, cloves - and then mix the dry ingredients into the wet, by hand, mixing until just combined.

fill mini muffin cups about 3/4 full. bake approximately 15 mins, cake tester will come out clean.
remove from pan and cool on wire rack.

glaze:
1/2 c powdered sugar
1/8 tsp vanilla
1 tbsp light cream
1 tbsp water

additional cinnamon for decoration (optional)

mix first 4 ingredients until no lumps. if too watery, add a little more sugar. if too dry, add a little more water. you want something spreadableand a little drippy, but not a liquid. maybe like honey-consistency?

spread glaze on mini muffins after they have cooled for 10 mins or so. allow to cool some more. sprinkle with additional cinnamon, if desired.


*11/7/07 - it was recently discovered why these ROCK. i accidentally doubled the amount of butter in the original recipe - which means i could have made the loaf. duh... so, anyway, they're low fat and all that ;)






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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I finally made the muffins. The kitchen smelled wonderful while they were baking and they taste great. Now the question is, how do I keep myself from eating them all up in the next 24 hours? Can they be frozen?

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