How to Prepare Muffins

Yesterday, I found half packet of chocolate chips left in the corner of the refrigerator the other day. The last time I used up the other half was when I baked Chocolate Chips Oat Cookie.

Another baking time for me today. I promised myself to bake another muffin series using chocolate chips, which is my favorite ingredients when comes to baking. The previous muffin I had baked was Chocolate Chips Raisin Muffin.

Good thing that I got this recipe from " The Complete Step by Step Cook Book" , a gigantic recipe book I had bought a few years back during the local book fair which was held in one of the shopping centre.

My little son ate quite a lot during teatime. I had to stop him because I was afraid that he might lose his appetite when dinner comes.

Needless to say, the wonderful combination of chocolate chips and orange make a great flavor and the soft texture are the favorites for sweet tooth eaters, especially little children running around at home. That's the only way to keep them down and quiet for a while.

TIPS on Baking Muffins

• When baking muffins, avoid using self-raising flour. You need to use plain flour and baking powder to bake well risen muffins. Self raising flour might not have enough baking powder to raise the fluffy soft texture muffins.
• I used light soft brown sugar instead of castor sugar because I prefer less sweet, low calories, healthy muffins.
• Remember to sift all dry ingredients before baking. This is to ensure any small particles, harden flour and air are removed to bake smooth fluffy muffins.
• Use FRESH ORANGE instead of prepacked orange juice to maintain the orange original zest and rind.
• Do not prepare overnight the orange juice or rind because the juice will turn sour the next day and the rind will change to dark brown instead.
• You can substitute chocolate chips with chunks of dark baking chocolate for more thick chocolaty taste. However, do take precaution when eating because the baking chocolate might still feel hot after freshly bake.
• In order to keep muffins fresh up to 3 days, store the leftover muffins in airtight containers. Refrigerate them , NOT FREEZE them.

Here is the recipe for Chocolate Chip and Orange Muffins.

How to Bake Coffee Walnut Cookie

I love coffee very much. Could not miss a cup a single day. Besides drinking coffee as a beverage, coffee can be used in making cookies, cakes and puddings too.

In the beginning, I thought that by adding coffee into cookies, it will taste bitter or ruin the whole batter. To my amazement, it taste delicious! I guess it is due to the butter and vanilla which well blended with the coffee flavor, eventhough I used 3-in-1 coffee powder instead of the original ones. Imagine the coffee fragrant lingers in the cookies and the mixture of walnuts gives out the crunchiness, better than normal groundnuts.

This recipe resembles chocolate chips cookie that has the soft texture, crunchy to bite, crispy on the edges and easily melt in your mouth.

Coffee Walnut cookie goes well with coffee or tea during teatime. I am sure your kids will fall for these cookies because my kids are asking for more!

How to Make Coffee Walnut Cookie

Preparation time takes around 10 minutes. All you need to do is , in a BIG bowl, pour in all the ingredients except the walnuts and coffee powder. Ensure that you have sifted all the dry ingredients before. Beat them up consistently until the batter becomes soft and creamy. Then add in the walnuts, coffee powder and blend well. Quick and easy , isn't it?

Baking time takes 15 to 20 minutes per tray. Therefore, it depends on how much batter you could put on the baking tray. If each tray makes 8 cookies, you will need to bake 4 to 5 times to finish up the whole batter.

Coffee Walnut Cookie recipe

3-in-1 coffee powder, butter

walnut, egg yolk

Ingredients:

• 225g plain flour sifted
• 225g butter
• 150g icing sugar sifted
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 150g chopped walnuts
• 2 tbs medium ground coffee / coffee powder
• 115g walnuts cut into pieces ( for decoration )

Method:

Step 1

• Preheat oven at 180C. Line the cookie tray with greased baking sheet.
• In a big bowl, sift flour, add butter, icing sugar, egg yolk and vanilla essence all together.
• Mix them well until batter becomes soft and creamy.

Step 2

• Add in chopped walnuts and coffee powder.
• Mix them with your hands.

Step 3

• Place heaped teaspoonful of batter on prepared baking sheets.
• Flatten lightly and decorate with walnuts pieces.
• Bake in the oven for 15-20min.

TIPS:

• When the cookies are starting to change color to brownish with crispy edges, use a spoon to touch the tenderness of the top cookie.
• If it is too soft, bake for another 2min.
• If it is semi-soft, you can turn off the oven now.
• Allow the cookies to cool off on baking tray because the cookies will harden by themselves.

My Recommendations:

Do you like walnuts? I am crazy over Walnut Cookies. Try it out. You won't regret!

Chocolate Chips Oat Cookie

Hi there ! This is the recipe for Chocolate Chips Oat Cookie with some step-by-step photos that I had taken for your convenience. Hope that you will have an enjoyable baking time !

Preparation time: 10min

Baking time 1.5 hour

Yield: 65-70 pieces

milk, chocolate chips, brown sugar

plain flour with baking powder, oats, egg, butter

Ingredients:

• 150g butter
• 200g brown sugar
• 1 medium egg-beaten
• 2 tablespoon fresh milk
• 135g plain flour-sifted
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder-sifted
• 125g quick cooking oats
• 150g chocolate chips

Method:

Step 1:

• Line cookie tray with baking sheet. Lightly grease the sheet.
• Sift plain flour and baking powder.
• Cream butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy.

Step 2:

• Stir in sifted flour, baking powder. Mix well.
• Beat in egg and milk alternately.

Step 3:

• Add in oats and chocolate chips.
• Stir until soft dough forms.

Step 4:

• Shape teaspoonful of batter into balls.
• Place them on the baking sheet.
• Gently flatten them with the back of a fork.
• Bake 175C for 15-20min.
• Turn the cookies upside down to ensure both sides are bake.

RICH GINGER CAKE

Have you tried ginger cake before? Well, ginger cake does taste sweet and tangy with a soft inner texture. You could reduce the cinnamon to 1/2 teaspoon instead if you don't like the cinnamon smell. Brown sugar gives the cake a well blended chocolate color and it is suitable for weight watchers to low down the calories. Instead of using stem ginger, you can substitute them with orange peel or diced cherries for the toppings.

Gold syrup can be replace with maple syrup or honey. The icing makes the whole cake looks rather tempting though. Sorry for the blurry photo. My handphone camera pixels are too low...

Ingredients

225g SR flour

3 ts ground ginger

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

115g butter

115g light soft brown sugar

2 eggs

5 tsp gold syrup

5 tsp milk

Toppings

3 pieces stem ginger

115g icing sugar

4 tsp stem ginger syrup

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 160C.
2. Grease cake tin.
3. Sift flour, cinnamon and bicarbonate of soda in a bowl.
4. Rub in butter and then sugar.
5. In another bowl, whisk eggs, syrup and milk until well blended.
6. Pour into the batter and beat until smooth and glossy.
7. Pour into the cake tin.
8. Bake for 45min until well risen .
9. Leave in the tin for 30min and then overturn it to a wire rack to cool.
10. Cut stem ginger or cherries into quarters.
11. Arrange on top of the cake.

Method for making icing:

1. In a bowl, beat together the icing sugar, syrup and a little water to make a smooth icing.
2. Transfer icing into a grease proof paper or baking sheet.
3. Drizzle over top of cake into any patterns.
4. Leave it to set.
5. Cut into squares.
6. Best serve with tea or coffee

CHOCOLATE CHIPS

Chocolate Chips

Everybody loves chocolate chips, regardless of age, toddler, kids, teenagers, adults and old folks. Chocolate chips are small chunks of chocolate, usually in the shape of teardrop with round flat bottom. Chocolate chips were originally found in United States. They are commonly used in cookies, muffins, breads, doughnuts, pancakes, waffles and even ice-creams !

Chocolate chips cookies taste great with a combination of butter, white and brown sugar. I have tried a couple of recipes with both sugars which were too sweet for my kids and me. There are many chocolate chips cookies recipes found in the internet. Some people likes big, fat cookies, thin crispy cookies or brownish chewy cookies. However, most of them contain both white and brown sugars. Fortunately, I found this recipe from NESTLE website that reduces the butter and uses brown sugar only. Brown sugar makes the whole batter looks brownish. In addition, this recipe included oats for healthier choice. After baking these wonderful cookies, I was amazed of its' crunchiness, chewy and full of chocolaty taste. My little toddler grabbed three pieces immediately after the chocolate chips oat cookies cool off !! For healthier and less sweet cookie, try this Chocolate Chips Oat Cookie for a change.

Tips for baking Chocolate Chips Oat Cookie

First and foremost, sift the plain flour and baking powder in a big bowl. Then, lightly grease the baking sheet. Otherwise, the cookies will stuck to the sheet itself. I ran into this trouble during the first batch. I couldn't peel off the bits of paper from the bottom of the cookies. Anyway, they are still edible.

In another bowl, beat the butter and sugar until soft and creamy. The batter should look light yellow and fluffy. Then, pour in the dry ingredients and the rest of the items.

Remember to leave some space in between each cookie because they will spread out during baking time.

Baking time takes around 15-20min per tray of 8 pieces of chunky cookies. Turn the cookies upside down to ensure the upper part of the cookies are bake too. Otherwise, the top part is still soft while the bottom part starts to burn.

Here is the recipe for Chocolate Chips Oat Cookie.

ORANGE COOKIE

Last week, I bought a packet of fresh oranges from a nearby hypermarket. It was a best value sale for the day. However, my family couldn't finish all 10 of them because some were sour. Already squeeze 3 orange juice and had to add honey to disperse the sourness. My kid's face cringe at the first taste. There were 4 oranges left in the fridge. I am not good in baking cakes so decided to go ahead with cookies instead. I saw a simple orange recipe at umami.typepad.com which looks rather different from mine. I find that this is the best crunchy cookie I have ever baked! Really taste similar to orange cake. When I had the first bite, they taste extremely crispy, crunchy and the texture was perfectly well-done. My daughter and I finished all 40 pieces of them the next day. The next time, I will add in some chocolate chips and change the flavor to lemon instead.

By the way, I did not have the orange oil, still, they taste delicious !! If you have almond nibs, sprinkle on them before baking.

Note:

Once you have grated the orange rind, use on the same day. Do not refridge overnight because the color changes to brownish and taste sour. Same goes with the squeezed orange juice.

Orange rind and grate them with a grater

Grated orange rind and remember to use FRESH ORANGES !!

Here's the recipe:-

Ingredients

115g butter

150g castor sugar / icing sugar

2 egg yolk

1 tbsp orange juice

2 orange rind-grated

200g flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp orange oil ( optional )

For Glazing:

1 egg- beaten

Method:

1. In a big bowl, sift sugar. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

2. Add in egg yolks, orange juice and rind. Stir until all well combined.

3. In another bowl, sift flour and baking powder together.

Add the flour into butter mixture.

4. Add in chopped raisins and mix well until it form a soft dough.

Chill in fridge for 2 hours.

5. Roll spoonful of it into lime balls and place on greased baking sheet.

Flatten with back of a fork.

6. Glaze with beaten egg.

Bake at 180C for 20 min or until golden brown.

Bottom of the cookies should be brownish which indicates crispy.