Back around Halloween, I spotted some mini choc chip orange muffins for sale in Morrisons. For some reason orange has become associated with Halloween – surely it should be pumpkin rather than orange flavour. I mean, I appreciate they are similar colours, but come on!
Anyway, I bought some, and discovered they were delicious, but tiny (the “mini” in the name should have given that away), and I proceeded to make my own. They turned out quite successfully, but as is a common theme, my chocolate chips took a dive to the bottom.
So for Day 3 of Recicember, I thought I’d give them another try, and base the muffins on a recipe concocted by someone else. Welcome to the madhouse, Mary Kaye Douglas!
Now, I’m quite happy with the recipe and how it turns out. I do however have a problem with the way the recipe is presented. This may be the fault of Ms Douglas, or possibly the fault of the formatting options on the AllRecipes site – let’s examine the evidence.
Step one of three indicates that we should turn the oven on and grease up our muffin tin/use paper cases. I would suggest that this is two steps – 1) Turn the oven on 2) Prepare the receptacles. But no big deal.
Step two is where it all goes wonky.
“Beat egg with a fork. Then stir in milk and oil. Sift flour into a large bowl. Add sugar, baking powder and salt. Add egg mixture to flour and stir until flour is moistened. BATTER SHOULD BE LUMPY. DO NOT OVERMIX.”
Dang, girl. Imagine if IKEA furniture came with instructions like this:
- You got wood and screws
- Bang it together
- Woot! Your bedroom is complete!
I’m seeing at least four steps in “Step 2”, with extra shouty instructions too. If we’re going to be pedantic, what am I adding sugar, baking powder, and salt to? Because in the next bit, I’m adding the egg mixture to the flour, not the flour-mixture. Maybe I should just keep them for later, so the entire thing can be made of flour and egg and then have a side of sugar, baking powder, and salt. INSTRUCTIONS UNCLEAR; HEAD CAUGHT IN OVEN.
Step three tells me to fill the receptacles, but I inserted an extra bit here – I added orange colouring and flavouring to the mix. I also used an electric mixer to wallop it all about, rather than a spoon, because I’m lazy. Do not overmix? As if.
Oh, and I used butter instead of oil, because I don’t have any vegetable oil. I’ve got olive oil, but I guess that would make the muffins taste a bit weird. Oh well.
So, everything walloped together and poured into the receptacles. Remember that chocolate roulade from day 1? There’s still some 30p chocolate left over from that, so smack it with a spoon or stab it with a knife and put some on top of the muffins.
If they sink, they’ll end up in the middle, right?
(…20 minutes pass…)
Heck yeah, that’s right! Chocolate orange flavoured muffins. Bang the kettle on, make a cuppa, inhale muffins. Job done. Nice one Mary. You’re much easier to get along with than that other Mary woman, even if you do seem to want to do everything at once.
TL;DR: Three step muffins in fifteen steps. Tastes like chocolate orange. Thanks, Terry.
