The recipe looked innocuous enough.
Blueberry, Cocoa and Buttermilk Muffins
2 cups self-raising flour (check)
1/2 cup caster sugar (check)
1 1/2 tablespoons coca powder (I didn’t have any, so I did what I assumed any self-respecting baker would do, substitute with what I had on hand, which in this case was Ovaltine powder.)
2 eggs (check)
100 ml buttermilk (Again, this wasn’t something in my pantry, so I made do with regular milk.)
3 tablespoons vegetable oil (I used olive oil.)
1/2 cup milk choc bits (check)
1 cup blueberries (skip – no berries of any kind on hand!)
With such an introduction, perhaps I was setting myself up for a culinary disaster.
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 190 degrees (fan-forced). What’s fan-forced? I know there’s a difference of 20 degrees between FF and conventional ovens, but what oven do I have? It didn’t occur to me to do the obvious i.e. check my manual…So I blithely assumed it’s a conventional oven, and upped the temp to 210 degrees.
Grease a 12-hole, 1/2 cup capacity muffin pan with butter or line with paper cases. I dutifully greased my 12-hole, mini muffin pan with olive oil (surely the effect should be the same?).
Sift self-raising flour, caster sugar and cocoa into a large bowl.
Oops, no sieve, so I simply poured all 3 ingredients into bowl and stirred them up with a wooden spoon.
Whisk together eggs, buttermilk and vegetable oil in a separate bowl. Add the choc bits and blueberries. The whisking was fine, except I then forgot part 2…
Use a large spoon to fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until they are just combined.
I couldn’t get my head around this one – fold what into what? - and proceeded to pour the wet mixture into the dry one (it was easier that way), only remembering belatedly to add the choc bits.
Afterwards, I had a deal of a time mixing everything together. The result was lumpy, stiff and uncooperative.
Spoon the mixture into the prepared muffin pan so the holes are about 3/4’s full. Bake for 20-30 minutes until muffins are firm with a crusty top.
There was quite a lot of mixture left over after the 12 holes were filled, so I got out a baking tray from the by-now well-heated oven, covered it with baking paper, and dropped lumps of sticky muffin mix as far apart as possible to fill up the tray. The result was 5 or 6 really ugly, misshapen lumps. But no matter, I thought, they might turn out to be beautifully tasty, chewy biscuits.
I set the timer for 20 minutes and went about my other business, confident that I would soon be able to set the table for a nice tea with the husband and daughter.
The first hint something had gone awry was when the hubby went: “I smell something…” at the same moment the smells of acrid burning wafted through the open plan kitchen into the front lounge, where he and daughter were hard at work sorting catalogues for distribution.
I opened the oven door and braved the heat long enough to gingerly lift out the tray of blackened muffins and bikkies. There was one redeeming point though. For the first time in my baking career, the muffins actually lifted clean away from the holes. Who cared if they were hard enough to pass as paper weights and completely charred beneath?
As for the bikkies, let’s just say we had a lot of fun, the daughter and I, trying to see just how much there was left to eat between the charred top layer and the bottom that was now practically inseparable from the paper. You know – the nice perfect soft middle layer with choc chips. We just couldn’t let that go to waste now, could we?
The girl was a great sport about it all. No condemnation or smart alecky wisecracks. In fact, she seemed to enjoy stuffing herself silly on the middle bits and running off to show Daddy her choc-stained fingers. Good on her.
So – one spectacular culinary disaster, and many more, no doubt, to come. We can’t all be Nigella Lawson, but to be able to celebrate the simple beauty of choc chips amid the overdoneness of daily life? That’s something I could do more of.
Bon Appetit!
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