Double Chocolate Cream Cheese Filled Muffins

What can I say? These muffins are epic. This is your ideal recipe to whip up on a cold, blustery day like it is in Wellington at the moment, infact all over New Zealand I believe!

I like them best straight out of the oven when the piping hot cream cheese just oozes out from between the chocolatety goodness. Incredible.

Guess you’ll just have to try the recipe to know what I’m talkin’ ’bout 🙂

Double Chocolate Cream Cheese Filled Muffins
Makes 12

• 1/2 cup canola oil
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 2 tsp milk
• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 cup cocoa
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips

Filling:

• 100 grams cream cheese, softened (I used light Philadelphia cream cheese)
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp flour

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Line a muffin tin with paper liners or spray well with non stick cooking spray. Set aside.

In large bowl, beat the oil, sugar, eggs, vanilla, sour cream and milk until well combined and light in color, for 3 minutes or so. Fold in remaining ingredients until just combined.

In small bowl, mix cream cheese, sugar and flour together until smooth. Set aside.

Scoop 1 large spoonful of muffin batter into prepared muffin tins to be 1/3 way full. Drop small spoonfuls of cream cheese mixture into middle of muffin batter (should be about 1 1/2-2 teaspoons per muffin). Scoop another large spoonful of muffin batter and pour overtop cream cheese mixture. Muffin tins should be filled 2/3-3/4 way full.

Bake 20-25 minutes. Remove from oven and cool 10 minutes before removing from tins. Once cooled, store in air tight containers, ideally in the fridge.

They also freeze particularly well 🙂 Enjoy.

Golden Orange, Date and Chocolate Cupcakes

It is not every day that I have fruit leftover which is slightly spoiled and in need of some attention. I usually can’t get enough of the stuff so it barely makes its way into the fruit bowl before it is completely annihilated. Yes, I just love fresh fruit.

You’d think because of this intro that I was talking about some fabulous fruit haul, like a bumper crop of feijoas or perhaps some juicy plums that had seen better days. Nope, not this time. Just a couple of sad-looking oranges.

My love of fruit of course makes me entirely jealous of people with free-standing houses and the ability to plant fruit trees galore that reproduce and get bigger, and better…year after year. Little ol’ me just lives in an apartment complex. The closest I get to a large supply of fruit is basically relying on the generosity of others! Workmates, mainly.

Anyway, least I know what my priorities are for later in life: 1. Free-standing house, 2. A big garden, 3. LOTS of fruit trees.

Back to the recipe.

There are so many great flavour combinations; I wish I kept a bit of a list. Every now and then I will read some thread where someone goes off on a riff of great combos. If I don’t write it down when I read it, I lose the info.

Orange and chocolate make a pretty delicious combination. Just like dark chocolate and lemon, white chocolate and raspberry, pear and caramel. This is originally a cake recipe which I’ve adapted slightly for a 12-hole muffin tray. The dates only add to the flavour, so if you don’t like them I suggest throwing them into the food processor with the orange and munching them up until they are really small. I really love dates so don’t like them too tiny.

The cake recipe suggests that you ice once baked (and you can do!) but I thought these little rays of sunshine tasted just perfect by themselves. The chocolate square on top adds that extra bit of sweetness and really compliments the orange, skin and all 🙂

Enjoy!

Golden Orange, Date and Chocolate Cupcakes
Makes 12

• 1 cup of sugar
• 1/2 a cup of butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 orange
• 1 cup of chopped dates
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla
• pinch of salt
• 2 cups of flour
• 1/2 a teaspoon of baking soda, dissolved in 3/4 cup of water
• Dark, milk, or white chocolate, 12 squares

Cream together the sugar and butter in a large bowl. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing between additions. Munch up a whole orange in blender (skin and all!) and add to the creamed mixture.

Add the chopped dates (which can be done by popping them in the blender at the same time as the orange), vanilla and salt to the mixture. Stir in the flour and baking soda ( dissolved in the water).

Pour the batter into a lined and greased 12-hole muffin tray and smooth out evenly. Poke a piece of chocolate into the batter of each cupcake. You can smooth the batter over the top of the chocolate if you like but I left mine on top – nice bit of decoration. Bake at 160 degrees for 25 minutes or until cooked (definitely better on the slightly undercooked side!)

This is my entry for Sweet New Zealand hosted by Bake Club this month. Get along and check out some of the entries at the end of the month!

Chocolate Peppermint Cupcakes

Just a quick one today! This chocolate mint cupcake recipe makes the ultimate cupcake for chocolate and mint lovers, like myself. If mint isn’t your thing then just ice with regular chocolate butter icing.

Yay! Today is the last day of work before we embark upon the 4-day Easter weekend. Gosh, isn’t the year is zipping by very quickly? It is now only 44 days until my big trip to Europe and the States – pretty exciting but so much to do before departure!

Have an egg-cellent long weekend everybody!

Chocolate Peppermint Cupcakes
Makes 12

For the cupcakes:

• 125 grams of butter
• 1 cup of white sugar
• 2 tablespoons of golden syrup
• 1 egg
• 1 cup of trim milk
• 2 cups of plain flour
• 1 teaspoons of baking powder
• 2 tablespoons of cocoa
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 1/2 a teaspoon of salt
• 1/2 teapsoon of vanilla essence
• 1 teaspoon of baking soda
• 1/4 a cup of trim milk

For the icing:

• 2 tbsp butter
• 2 cups icing sugar
• 2 tbsps cocoa
• 2 tbsps hot water
• few drops of green food colouring
• few drops of peppermint essence

Cream together the butter and the sugar. Add the egg and beat well until combined. Beat in the 1 cup of milk. Sift in the dry ingredients and fold in. Add vanilla. Dissolve the baking soda into the milk and add to the cake batter. Mix extremely well. Divide the mixture up between a 12-hole muffin pan.

Bake for approximately 20 minutes at about 180 degrees. Set aside until the cupcakes have completely cooled.

For the icing, blend together about 2 tbsp of butter with 2 cups of icing sugar. Add a small amount of cocoa and a few drops of green food colouring. If you want a brighter shade of green that isn’t chocolate peppermint flavoured, omit the cocoa.

Sour Cream Berry Cupcakes

Meet Ming. Ming makes cupcakes. Infact she makes cupcakes, cookies and savouries. I don’t know a lot else about Ming expect she is just an ordinary homebaker like you and I, who likes taking pictures of her baking.

What I do know is that I haven’t quite come across another baking site like hers that makes me drool quite as much as I do when I’m scrolling through this one. Her website is a documentation of a project to test, experiment and create new flavours of cupcakes and other delicious treats. Sounds like a perfect little life to me.

Although I discovered this wee beauty a while ago, I have only made this one so far and it sure is delicious! I definitely recommend.

On a side note, I finally got myself one of these! I can now decorate to my heart’s content and not worry about the little wee things getting squashed!

Sour Cream Berry Cupcakes
Makes 10

For the cupcakes:

• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• pinch of salt
• 115 grams butter
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/4 tsp vanilla essence
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 1/2 cups berries (fresh or frozen)

For the icing:

• 2 tbsp butter, softened
• 1/4 cup cream cheese
• 1 cup icing sugar
• 1 tsp lemon rind, grated
• 1 tsp vanilla essence

Mix together the flour, baking soda, and salt. In a separate bowl, cream butter and sugar on medium until light and fluffy. Reduce speed to low and add vanilla and egg. Stir in the sour cream.  Add flour mixture.  Stir in the berries.  Bake at 180 degrees for approximately 20 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean.

To make the icing, beat the butter and cream cheese together until it goes nice and smooth and creamy. Slowly mix in the icing sugar and blend it till it’s really well combined and then throw in the lemon rind and the vanilla essence and give it another couple of stirs. Ice the cupcakes once cooled and if you like, you can top with additional berries or decorate with some white chocolate.

Lemon Sour Cream Cupcakes

It is Sunday afternoon and the All Blacks are just about to go head to head with Canada. I do watch the odd game of Rugby and I am 100% behind the All Blacks like the rest of New Zealand. With an abundant supply of homemade lemon curd in the fridge, it is the perfect time to make something delicious to eat while watching the game. Although this recipe is technically for a cake, they make perfect little cupcakes.

Lemon Sour Cream Cupcakes

• 125 g butter, softened
• 2 teaspoons grated lemon rind
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup Edmonds plain baking flour
• 1 teaspoon Edmonds baking powder
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• Icing sugar

Beat butter, lemon rind, sugar and eggs together until light and fluffy. Sift flour and baking powder together and fold sifted ingredients into egg mixture alternately with sour cream, mixing until smooth.

Pour mixture into a greased muffin tin.

Bake at 160°C for 45 minutes (usually less than this!) or until cupcakes spring back when lightly touched. Leave in tin for 5-10 minutes before turning out onto a cooling rack. Once the cupcakes have been baked and cooled, a hole is made in the centre of each cupcake and fill with a small spoon of lemon curd. Plug the hole with the cupcake lid to seal.

Lastly, I adore the combination of dark chocolate and lemon. It is delicious, but I find that it is rarely combined. Once the cupcakes have been iced, I decorate the top with a shard of dark chocolate. I hope you enjoy making this recipe as much as I do.