Two kinds of muffins...

English Muffins = <3

"I can hardly eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. "
- Algernon Moncrieff (The Importance of Being Earnest)

Yay for yeast! I've been trying more savory breads now that I've realised that yeast isn't that hard to use, so I decided to make English Muffins... well, my brother wanted them so I decided to make them. He read The Importance of Being Earnest and had to have them.
Fresh bread just tastes so damn good, no matter what kind it is. These were really nice straight off the pan while they were still hot, you didn't even need to toast them!

I found 'baking' them on the pan really strange and I was paranoid that they wouldn't cook all the way through, some of them were really thick. But they worked out fine, better than fine. Though I did absentmindedly start tapping on some of the ones waiting to be cooked and knocked the air out of them >_< The recipe came from 'Essentials: Bread by Linda Doeser. It's a good book for people like me who are just starting to make bread using a bread machine. All the recipes come with pictures, which I love, and the instructions are pretty clear.

I didn't really change the recipe at all except I used half wholegrain flour and half white, and I didn't have any rice flour so I just used plain (it's only for decoration anyway).

Recipe: English Muffins

Ingredients:
350ml hand-hot milk
450g strong white bread flour (or 225g strong white flour plus 225g wholemeal bread flour)
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp caster sugar
15g butter, softened or diced
1 1/2 tsp easy-blend dried yeast
ground rice or rice flour, for dusting
Oil, for greasing

Method:
Pour the milk into the bread pan. Sprinkle the flour over the liquid to cover. Place the sugar, salt, and butter in 3 corners of the pan. Indent the flour without exposing the liquid and add the yeast. Set the bread machine to dough setting and press start.
Remove the finished dough from the pan and knock back gently on a lightly floured surface. Roll out to 1 cm thick. Stamp out rounds with a plain 7.5 cm pastry cutter. Gather up trimmings, knead together, leave to rest for 3 minutes. Re-roll and stamp more muffins.
Place muffins on a baking sheet dusted with rice flour. Dust the tops with ground rice. Cover with oiled clingfilm and set aside to rise in a warm place for 25-30 minutes, until doubled in size. Remove clingfilm. Lightly oil a griddle or heavy frying pan and heat well. Cook the muffins in batched, over a low heat, for 6-7 minutes on each side (I cooked them for about 10-15 each side). Serve warm, or toasted.

I think this recipe turned out really well, I made them twice in two days! It probably just has something to do with my undying love for English muffins, but even so it's definitely a good one :)

... and the other kind of muffin...

The Classic Muffin

I've been longing to make blueberry muffins for ages, they're just the sort of thing that everyone's made. But blueberries are so damn expensive in Ireland, it's insane. Thankfully Dunnes was selling them for about two euro per 125g because they were reaching their sell-by date, score :)
The recipe is from Delia Smith's 'Summer Collection'. I love all her recipes, she explains things in great detail and doesn't leave anything to guesswork. Plus it made some friggin' tasty muffins, so thumbs up from me. Though this recipe makes a freakishly small amount of muffins, so doubling it is a good idea.

Mmmm, crunchy topping

Recipe: Blueberry Pecan Muffins

Ingredients:
150g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg
40g caster sugar
110 ml milk
50g butter, melted
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
110g small blueberries
50g pecans Finley chopped
50g pecans Finley chopped, for topping.
Demera sugar, for sprinkling

Method:
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C/ 400 F
Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. In a separate bowl mix together the egg, sugar, milk, melted butter, and vanilla. Sift the dry ingredients into the egg mixture. Fold in the dry ingredients quickly, about 15 seconds. The batter should look lumpy, do not over mix.

Fold in the 50g of chopped pecans and blueberries lightly. Spoon into prepared muffin, sprinkle with chopped pecans and sugar. Bake on a high shelf in the oven for 20-30 minutes. Cool on wire rack.

Ummm, they're healthy because they have fruit in them ;)

This was the first time I've ever had proper, home-made blueberry muffins, and they are so much better than shop-bought ones. In my experience the blueberry part of the muffin is just a kind of blue smudge that looks like there was once a blueberry there, but these had proper chunks of fruit in them, lots of flavour. The topping of brown sugar and pecans in amazing; the pecans toast and the sugar caramelises. It's not the best muffin I've ever had, but it's up there.