IT’S Christmas Day, and everyone’s having a ball. There’s a feast everywhere you look. You simply have to pick what you like and enjoy. But the celebration does not end with Christmas Day. The holiday season stretches for one more week. In the Philippines, it ends with the observance of the Feast of the Three Kings on the first Sunday of January the following year, no matter what date that falls on. So expect more visitors to come a-calling in the house as you enjoy the rest of your holiday break. What should you serve? Well, one thing that you can serve for dessert or snack is classic Blueberry Muffins fresh out of your oven. Nothing beats the smell of that. The aroma alone will make your visitors pick up a piece and sink their teeth into it. Ooh-la-la! Simply marvelous.
Since I love to bake, imagine how happy I was to find out that one of the recipes to be featured in a recently concluded cooking demo event of FLAVORS Magazine, titled Christmas Cooking with FLAVORS 2012, held at the Annex Atrium of SM City Fairview was Blueberry Muffins. Our account executives have informed me ahead of schedule that Kitchen Aid was participating in the event and that its featured chef, Chef Carla Leopoldo Valencia, a freelance bakery consultant and baking instructress, was making Blueberry Muffins. So I happily wrote that baking sequence sponsored by Kitchen Aid into the script and then sat back, relaxed and looked forward to the freshly baked Blueberry Muffins. I didn’t literally sit back and relax, though, since I had to get the program going and make sure every sequence smoothly came together into a cohesive whole. But I did look forward to the Blueberry Muffins, which Chef Carla so brilliantly prepared on stage. And, yes, I got to sink my teeth into one of them at the end of the show. There was a lot to go around for everyone in the audience to try – and the production staff, too!
Here’s the recipe. Have a good time preparing them in your kitchen and enjoying them with family and friends afterwards.
70 grams water
3 grams vanilla extract
3 eggs
10 grams cake emulsifier
210 grams all purpose flour
11 grams baking powder
2.5 grams salt
120 grams sugar
10 grams powdered milk
20 grams butter, softened
70 grams oil
100 grams canned blueberry filling
25 grams canned blueberry topping*
shortening for greasing muffin pans
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Grease muffin pans with shortening, then dust with extra flour and line with paper cups. Set aside.
2. Combine water, vanilla, beaten eggs and cake emulsifier in the bowl of a stand mixer. Mix at Speed 1 for 30 seconds.
3. In another bowl, sift together flour and baking powder, and mix in salt, sugar and powdered milk. Mix well.
4. Add flour mixture to the egg mixture. Mix at Speed 1 for 30 seconds, then at Speed 4 for 2 minutes.
5. Add softened butter, then mix at Speed 4 for 1 minute and at Speed 7 for 2 minutes.
6. Add oil and mix at Speed 4 for 1 minute.
7. Add blueberry filling (*pick out some blueberries from the canned blueberry filling and set aside for the topping later on). Mix just until blueberries are incorporated into the mixture.
8. Fill paper cups on muffin pans with the batter two-thirds full. Place blueberry topping (*the blueberries set aside from the canned blueberry filling) on top of each muffin.
9. Bake in preheated oven for about 25 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
