Unusual Love Affair in London: Marmalade Muffins

Today, after my swim and after arranging a few bits and bobs I headed to "Wendy's Kitchen" in Streatham - a place I have become, shall we say, "well acquainted with" during the last couple of month. First to make homemade Marmalade, then to make homemade Lemon Curd and today Wendy rustled up delicious homemade Marmalade Muffins! As ever I watched and recorded her every move. So that you too can have a go at making them! ... By the way Wendy made the Marmalade Muffins especially for tomorrow's Lido breakfast. It's become a bit of a fixture now : every 1st saturday of the months an (ever growing) group of us cold water swimmer get together for a good old catch up and a delicious breakfa(e)st ! :)

As I arrived Wendy had all the ingredients out and ready - so, time to get going

Wendy asked me to start part of the proceedings which was to beat two large eggs in a bowl - N.B: best to have two separate mixing bowls at hand as the "dry ingredients" and the "wet ingredients" start off in two separate bowls! while I was doing that Wendy got started with the dry ingredients:

put 300gr. of self raising flour and a tea spoon of baking powder ...

into a sieve

when coking with self raising flour one tends to use a sieve as it lets more air in and the added baking powder also gets evenly distributed

add to that ...

50gr of muesli

here we go -

back to the "wet bowl" where 142 ml of creme fraiche got added to the beaten eggs - Wendy ended up doing both bowls as I was capturing every move!

followed by 100ml of sunflower oil

mix it all together

until it is all lovely and fluffy

now mix in 85gr. of golden caster sugar in (the "wet bowl") - mix it all well in!

back to the "dry ingredients" bowl - Before I arrived, Wendy had chopped and soaked 100gr. of ready to eat dried apricot in four table spoons of orange juice for a few hours.

ready to be added to the dry mixture

mix it well to the dry ingredients

time to add the "wet ingredients"

to the dry

start mixing it all together - be gentle as you want to keep it nice and airy - take care not to "over mix"

Wendy decided to make the muffins a tad smaller than in the recipe (and more manageable for eating as we swimmers are not known to be greedy or to be over eating ! )

she used smaller sized fairy cake paper cups which meant that we got 18 muffins instead of 12

(bigger ones)

time to spoon the muffin mixture into the paper cups

keep going Wendy ...

... there are 18 of them!

back to more mixing - this time for the topping - start with 50gr of light brown sugar

add 50 gr. of muesli

and two table spoons of sunflower oil

mix it all together

and here for the "piece de resistance" Wendy's homemade vintage (2010) marmalade!

make a dent in each muffin - either with your finger or with a spoon - big enough ...

...to fill it with marmalade

then add the crunchy topping

spread it evenly (on all 18 muffins!)

put in the preheated oven - gas mark 5 0r 190 Celsius

Wendy decided to start by setting the timer to 15 Minutes as her muffins are smaller than the ones in the recipe .. however after 15 min. they were not quite ready so we left them in for another 10 min.