Following our Monday poetry challenge, I thought I’d let you consider a Tuesday cookery challenge. I’m sure you already have your own favourite cup cake and muffin recipes. If not, there’s plenty on the Internet. My daughter, Erin, makes wonderful lemon drizzle cup-cakes. As for muffins, well… we have an exclusive!
Never have the secrets been revealed for Mrs McCarthy’s Chocolate Beetroot Muffins. And I’m also going to share Mrs McCarthy’s Carrot and Orange Cup Cake recipe. These top secret recipes surely parallel those chocolate-making recipes that Charlie found out about when he first set foot in Willie Wonka’s factory, so, if you have the ingredients in the cupboard, why not give one of them a go! If you don’t have all of the ingredients then please be patient. When the advice is to only go the shops when it is essential, then you could always try Mrs McCarthy’s recipes next week (after the weekly family shop), It would be hard to justify a visit to the supermarket, given the current circumstances, for just a beetroot!
Instead, show us how resourceful you can be and impress by conjuring up some cup cakes or muffins using your own muffin or cup-cake recipes with whatever you have in the cupboard. Originality and creativity are both to be admired!
As with the poems, I’d love to see how you get on so please take a photo and e-mail it to me at head@skyswood.herts.sch.uk.
Okay, on to Mrs McCarthy’s recipes:
Chocolate Beetroot Muffins
Ingredients:
13g Cocoa Powder
185g Self raising flour
75g Sugar
1 Beaten egg
60 ml Vegetable Oil
125 ml Milk
75g Cooked beetroot (grated)
- Place flour, cocoa powder and sugar into a mixing bowl, and mix.
- Add the egg, oil and milk to the flour mixture and then beat (on Speed 2) for a couple of minutes.
- Pour in the grated beetroot and mix (on Speed 1) for one minute.
- Divide into mini muffin cases using an ice cream scoop.
- Bake in a pre-heated oven (GM4 / 350 F / 180 C) for 20 minutes and then turn out onto a cooling rack.
- Alternative, you could use 75g of tinned dark cherries (drained) if you’d prefer this to grated beetroot.
Carrot and Orange Cup Cakes
Ingredients:
185g Margarine
185g Caster Sugar
185g Self-raising flour
3 Eggs
Half a teaspoon of mixed spice
125g Grated carrots
Half and orange (juice and zest)
Icing Sugar (for dusting)
- Cream the margarine, caster sugar, orange juice and zest together in a mixing bowl (Speed 2) for 4 minutes until blended.
- Add the eggs. Mix using beater (Speed 1) until blended.
- Add the flour, mixed spice and grated carrot. Mix them in (Speed 1) for one minute.
- Divide into muffin cases using a potato scoop.
- Bake in a pre-heated oven (GM4 / 350F / 180C) for 25-30 minutes.
- Allow to cool.
- Dust with icing sugar before serving.