Gingerbread muffins
Cooking notes
Makes – 12 cupcakes.
Adapted from – Nigella Lawson’s recipe in Feast.
You can be creative with a topping, Nigella Lawson suggests brushing a little edible gold leaf soon as you take them out of the oven. I left them as is.
Ingredients
Plain flour – 250 gm
Bicarbonate of soda – ½ teaspoon
Baking powder – 1 teaspoon
Ginger, finely chopped – 1.5 teaspoons
Cinnamon powder (ground cinnamon) – 1 teaspoon
Cloves, ground – ¼ teaspoon
Egg – 1
Brown sugar – 100 gm
Milk (full fat, preferable) – 150 ml
Vinegar – ¼ teaspoon
Sunflower oil – 6 tablespoons (vegetable or corn oil also ok)
Maple syrup – 8 tablespoons (golden syrup or black treacle also ok)
Muffin papers ready, if you use a muffin tin (I use aluminium tins)
Method
Pre-heat the oven to 200°C. With smaller ovens, pre-heat to about 20°C than the recipe’s temperature, as they cook a lot faster (mine is toaster size so I kept it at 180°C).
Combine the plain flour, bicarb of soda, baking powder, and spices (i.e. ginger, cinnamon, cloves) in a large bowl.
In a separate bowl, whisk the egg, and then add in the sugar. Break up any lumps.
To this, add the milk and vinegar, and then the oil with a tablespoon
Use the same oily tablespoon to add in the syrup (so it doesn’t stick to it).
Whisk the wet mixture, and then combine it with the dry mixture (flour and spices).
Stir until mixed well into one big lumpy mixture.
Spoon or pour the mixture into the muffin tins, filling up about ½ or 3/4th of the way.
Bake for 15-20 minutes – depending on when the tops are dry. These cook faster in a small oven, so you may need to keep a watch from the 15th minute onward.
Let them cool on a rack, or serve nice and warm. They taste great with some vanilla ice cream.