apple muffins

i am a big fan of cupcakes eversince i lived in london 9 years ago. the new dimension of bakery was beyond compare to me though i indulge in bohemian influenced tradition of baking eversince i was born :) my mother, my aunts and my late grandmother used to bake at least two cakes a week! no wonder my ass got so big once i got older ...

can you believe that i have never seen a muffins backing tray before i came to london? this simply was something pretty new and not available back home. and i got hooked immediately. i bought a muffins tray and a muffins cooking book and back in austria i sweept into the long family tradiditon of baking like a whirlwind.

my muffins are a most welcome desert and tea cake at family gatherings eversince.
when i make them for myself i tend to make use of leftovers and hidden treasures in my cupboard.

i have been helping my mother in the kitchen since i was 5 years old and she never ever stuck to a single recipe ... replace an ingredient with another one, add a dash of this, add a dash of that ... i guess i inherited that kind of cooking style. the result of my trial and error food game never really where errors. sometimes they tasted quite unpredictable but they where never a disappointment.

in fact, family recipes are not written down at all. my mother and her sisters watched my granny in the kitchen and i did the same. so you always give a family recipe your own touch and there are always individual adjustments made. the legacy is passed on with a personal touch :)

so on my lazy sunday afternoon i decided to do something for my newborn foodblog-passion.
opening my kitchen cupboard and going "hummmm ... what have we got here? and what can i cook with it?" let me make up a recipe for apple muffins.

1 apple
1 tbsp water
1 tbsp sugar
25 g raisins
½ tbsp rum
100 g melted butter
113 g flour (spelt wheat)
½ tbsp backing powder
20 g ground hazelnuts
45 g oatmeal
75 g sugar
¼ tsp cinnamon
a dash of salt

01 peel and dice the apple (i like my filling chunky!)
02 steam apples with water, sugar, cinnamon, raisins and rum
03 let cool down
04 make dough from the rest of the ingredients
05 let it rest for an hour
06 spread half of the dough in the muffin tray
07 put filling on top
08 cover with the rest of the dough
09 bake for 25 minutes at 200 °C
10 sprinkle with powdered sugar when cooled down
11 enjoy with a nice hot drink

a really big advantage of being single and dividing the quantities by four is that you will not gulp down 20 muffins just because they are delicious and you can't stop. you enjoy the mini-portion you made and feel like you are in heaven.

enjoying the cupcakes with a nice cup of coffee on the riverbanks of the danube is really a heavenly treat :)