Double Chocolate and Salted Caramel Muffins

What could be better when you're after a mid morning or afternoon snack than a homemade muffin, especially a chocolate and salted caramel muffin!

Banana Salted Caramel Muffins

Banana muffins have always been a favorite of mine and now I like them even more with the addition of salted caramel!

Strawberry Chocolate Chip Muffins

Strawberries and Chocolate - a match made in heaven. Add them to muffins, with a cheeky strawberry jam centre and you have pure deliciousness.

Vanilla and Strawberry Cupcakes

These simple yet elegant little cupcakes add a whole load of delicious to any party or afternoon tea.

Fruit 'n Nut Muffins

Berries, apple, almond, and oats combine beautifully into these moist and delicious sugar-free muffins.

Chocolate Orange Muffins

Chocolate and Orange pair beautifully in these delightful little muffins.

Ferrero Rocher Muffins

Imagining biting into a beautiful, moist chocolate muffin to find the delicious crunch of a Ferrero Rocher Chocolate... Who wouldn't enjoy that?

Mini Lemon and Berry Cakes

I am excited to be back to blogging after a week and a half away at a conference in Argentina.

Today I am sharing these super easy mini Lemon and Berry Cakes with you. This is a little bit of a cheat recipe, as it's really just a few small adaptions to my Lemon and Raspberry Loaf.

Snickers Muffins

Snickers are my favorite chocolate bar. I just love the combination of chocolate, caramel, and peanuts. Snickers are also great in all sorts of baked goodies. Here I've turned them delicious chocolate muffins.

What I loved most about these muffins was the crunch of the chunks of snickers bar within the muffin itself. The caramel from the pieces of snickers bar on top of each muffin also seeped down towards the center of the muffins spreading the chocolate bar deliciousness even further.

Snickers Muffins

Makes 12

2 1/4 Cups plain flour
3/4 Cup sugar
1/4 Cup cocoa powder
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
70 g (2.5 oz) butter, melted
1 Cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs, lightly beaten
3 Snickers bars, 2 roughly chopped and 1 divided into 12 chunks

1. Preheat the oven to 200C (400F) and grease or line the wholes of a muffin tin.

2. Combine the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Combine the milk, butter, eggs, and vanilla in another. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, add the roughly chopped snickers bars and mix until ingredients are just combined.

3. Spoon into the prepared muffin tin and bake for 20 minutes. Half way through cooking, place a piece of the snickers chunks onto the top of each muffin and continue baking.

4. Cool on a wire rack before storing in an airtight container.

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Muffins

I've been on a bit of a peanut butter kick lately, about half of what I have been baking contains peanut butter. But whose going to complain about that?

These peanut butter and chocolate chip muffins were amazing. But why wouldn't they be? Peanut butter and chocolate is a match made in heaven.

I love using brown sugar in muffins like these as it gives a nice caramelized flavor that you can't get with normal white sugar.

I make muffins every weekend for my honey to take to work for his breakfast during the week, thinking of new muffin ideas can really stretch my imagination sometimes so if you have an idea that you would like to see a recipe for I will happily make it for you so send your ideas my way!

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Muffins

Makes 12

40 g (1.4 oz, 3 Tbsp) butter
3/4 cup peanut butter
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
3/4 cup skim milk
2 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 180C ( 350F) and grease or line the holes of a muffin tin.

2. Mix the butter, peanut butter, sugars, and eggs together in a bowl. Add the milk.

3. Mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and chocolate chips. Add to the peanut butter mixture and mix until everything is just combined.

4. Spoon into the prepared muffin tin and bake for 20 minutes, until a skewer inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean. Cool in the tin for about 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack.

5. When cooled, drizzle with melted chocolate (optional) for that little something extra.

6. Store in an airtight container at room temperature. They last a good few days!

Lemon Muffins

These are just the most perfect wee muffins. They get sweetness from the sugary muffin batter, tartness of lemon juice, a sweet runny, lemon curd center... Just trying to describe them is making my mouth water!

This one was actually another idea of my boyfriend. Isn't he just full of them lately?? :)

Lemon Muffins

Makes 12

2 1/2 Cups self raising flour
3/4 Cup caster sugar
Finely grated rind of 1 large lemon
1/4 Cup fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 Cup plain, fat free yogurt
1/2 Cup vegetable oil
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
6 Tbsp lemon curd

1. Preheat oven to 190C (375F) and grease or line the holes of a muffin pan.

2. Sift the flour into a large bowl, stir in the sugar. Add the lemon rind, juice, yogurt, oil, eggs, and vanilla. Mix until just combined.

3. Spoon half of the mixture across the holes of the muffin pan, add 1/2 Tbsp or so of lemon curd to each muffin, top with the remaining muffin mixture.

4. Bake for 15 - 20 minutes, until the muffins are firm when pressed gently. Cool in the pan for about 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack. Store in an airtight container at room temperature.

Feijoa Muffins

Autumn (or Fall) in New Zealand is all about the feijoa. A quick Google search has just educated me to the fact that the feijoa is native to Brazil and other parts of South America and is also known as Pineapple Guava or Guavasteen. Almost everyone in NZ knows someone with a Feijoa tree (which produce fruit prolifically!) and therefore end up with shopping bags full of the fruit. Luckily, the are fantastically suited to baking.

Feijoa Muffins

Makes 12

75 g butter, melted
1 Cup chopped feijoa
2 eggs
3/4 Cup stevia or sugar
2 tsp baking powder
2 Cup plain flour
1 Cup skim milk

1. Preheat oven to 200ºC (390ºF). And line a 12 hole muffin tin with paper cases.

2. Sift flour, baking powder, and stevia into a bowl.

3. Whisk eggs, milk, and butter together in a bowl. Pour this mixture into the flour mixture. Add feijoas and mix until just combined. Don't over mix!

4. Spoon the mixture into the lined muffin pan and bake for 10-15 minutes, until the muffins spring back when pressed gently.

5. Cool on a wire rack, store in an airtight container.

Vanilla Chocolate Chip Muffins

This year I am baking morning tea for everyone in the lab when someone has a birthday. Everyone has written down their favorite flavors (as well as a few things they really don't like!) and I am using these flavors to create new recipes for them. The first birthday had a favorite of vanilla so I made some simple vanilla chocolate chip muffins.

Vanilla Chocolate Chip Muffins

Makes 12

2 Cups self raising flour
1 Cup sugar
1 Egg, lightly beaten
1 Cup milk
1/4 Cup melted butter
3 tsp vanilla bean paste
1/2 Cup chocolate chips

1. Preheat the oven to 190°C (370°F). Combine the sugar and egg in a bowl and beat well. Alternate adding the flour and milk, start by adding some of the flour, then add some of the milk, combine well, then more flour, followed by more milk. Beat well.

2. Stir in the butter, vanilla, and chocolate chips

3. Spoon into a 12 hole muffin pan lined with paper cases. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until cooked and spring back when the top is gently pressed. Remove muffins from the pan and cool on a wire rack.

Banana Honey Muffins

I had some bananas that I needed to use as they had gone pretty black. I wanted to make something that was at least semi-decent nutrition wise, and I also wanted to just use ingredients that I already had in the pantry.

Banana honey muffins fitted with all these criteria, so here they are!

Banana Honey Muffins

Makes 14

2 Cups self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 Cup trim milk
2 Tbsp honey
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 eggs
1 medium bananas, mashed
1/4 Cup stevia
50 g apple sauce

1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease or line a muffin pan.

2.  Sift the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, stevia and salt into a large bowl. 

3. Combine the apple sauce, milk, honey, vanilla, eggs, and mashed banana in another bowl and whisk until well combined.

4. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and add the wet ingredients. Stir until just combined. 

5. Spoon into the muffin pan and bake for 15 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the muffins comes out clean. 

Nutritional Information:

Calories 102
Carbs     20 g
Fat         1 g
Protein   3 g
Fibre      1 g
Sodium   217 mg

Blueberry and Lemon Curd Muffins

There is a cafe near the lab that has the most amazing blueberry lemon muffins, but as with any cafe brought muffin they are really expensive and absolutely loaded with sugar. So I decided to try and write a healthier version of  this muffin flavour and this is what I came up with, no sugar and no butter but full of flavour.

My friends got stuck right in almost as soon as they came out of the oven and their comments were very positive. I waited until after they had eaten their muffins to tell them that there was no sugar or butter and they said they would have never guessed and that it tasted better than most muffins they have brought in stores.

My boyfriend doesn't like blueberries so I set aside a quarter of the batter before adding blueberries and added raspberries to his instead. They look like they turned out well! Once he has tasted them I will let you know how that combination turned out.

Blueberry Lemon Curd Muffins

Makes 12


2 Cups self raising flour
1/4 Cup Stevia (or 1 Cup of sugar if you want)
1 egg
1/4 Cup apple sauce
1 1/4 Cup skim milk
1 tsp grated lemon rind
2 tsp lemon juice
1 1/4 Cup blueberries (fresh or frozen, if using frozen they don't need to be thawed)
12 tsp lemon curd

1. Preheat oven to 200°C and grease or line a 12 hole muffin tin

2. Mix all the ingredients except the lemon curd in a large bowl until just combined.

3. Place about a tablespoon full of mixture into each hole of the tin, add 1 tsp of lemon curd per hole:

4. Cover the lemon curd with the remaining batter and bake for about 15 minutes.

Nutritional Information

Calories 98
Carbs    18 g
Fat         1 g
Protein   3 g

Berry Crumble Muffins

I had some left over apple sauce from the cookies the other day so I decided to make some muffins with it. This is what I came up with. Berry muffins with a crumble topping.

I used raspberries but they would be awesome with mixed berries.

Berry Crumble Muffins

Makes 15

1 Cup berries (blueberries, raspberries, blackberries...) Fresh or frozen
1/2 C brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 Cup wholemeal flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
100 g apple sauce
2 eggs, beaten
1 Cup trim milk

2 Tbsp brown sugar
2 Tbsp rolled oats

1. Preheat oven to 220°C and grease a muffin tin.

2. Combine all the ingredients from the top list in a large mixing bowl and mix until just combined. Don't over mix of the muffins will be tough.

3. Spoon into the muffin tin.

4.  Combine the 2 Tbsp brown sugar and oats in a small bowl and sprinkle a little bit over the top of each muffin.

5. Bake for about 15 minutes, until the muffins spring back when pressed lightly.

Nutritional Information:

Calories 110
Carbs    20 g
Fat         1 g
Protein   4 g
Fibre      2 g