29 October 2012

Results!

After a number of attempts at baking muffins in ice cream cones, I was finally successful.

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I made the same nougat muffins I wanted to do for the village fete.

I made a few tweaks to the recipe:

Ingredients

100 g unsalted butter at room temperature
2.5 dl caster sugar
2 medium eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbsp cocoa powder
2.5 dl plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 dl crème fraîche
75 g Viennese nougat finely diced

I reduced the amount of butter. When I made these in paper cases, they would always come out very greasy and I suspect the reason is that the pieces of nougat were added to the recipe, but no adjustments were made for the fact that nougat has a lot of fat in it and so the excess would seep out. I reduced the butter with 50 grams from the original recipe.

I also baked at 140 degrees C,to be sure the muffins wouldn't erupt. This meant baking them for just over an hour. Lundulph got to try one and said it was OK and was well baked through.

I let them cool completely before mixing meringue. I wanted originally to make marshmallow fluff, but the recipe I wanted to use calls for golden syrup, which I didn't have, so I went for regular meringue instead:

3 medium egg whites
2 dl caster sugar

Whisked together over a bain marie. Took longer than I expected and I splattered up the cooker quite a bit.

Then I piped it over the muffins.

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I need to practice piping as well, I didn't do it very well, but on the whole the result was pretty OK. I baked the meringue at 100 degrees for an hour and then left the cones in the oven and let it cool completely. The mixture was only enough for 15 of the cones, the last one just got a little dab.

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So visually they turned out rather nice, but eating them was a bit tricky. Still, I'm very pleased that they finally turned out the way I wanted them to. I noticed that in the second baking, the sponge sank in a bit, I'm not sure why. I'm also not sure how long they will keep or if the meringue will suck out the moisture in the muffin sponge and go gooey.