Muffin Monday

These muffins are my entry to Muffin Monday, a month long muffin roundup hosted by Elena at Experiments. To check out the other entries go here. I actually made these muffins over the weekend, but considering the name of the event it seemed fitting to wait until Monday to post about them.

I wanted to try and create muffins that were a little different to the standard shop bought flavours and came up with the idea of placing a blob of jam in the middle of the muffin batter before baking, turning them into a sort of doughnut style muffin. The only jam I had in my fridge was the plum jam I made over the summer but I decided this would work very well and due to my love of mixed spice I added a generous ½ tsp to the batter mix, which really complimented the plum flavour.

I pondered how to ‘decorate’ the muffins. I felt they definitely needed some sort of topping but frosting or icing didn’t seem quite right. I then thought of sprinkling over a crumble mix, after all plum crumble is quite a classic. Pleased with my ideas I set to work. The resulting muffins were light, fluffy and gave off the most wonderful aroma whist in the oven. They have a lovely crisp golden brown topping which hides the secret pocket of oozey sweet jam. The spice adds great flavour and brings the whole thing together with the aroma reminding me of early autumn.

These are delicious eaten still slightly warm, but be careful the jam isn’t still too hot. I even heated one up the next day and ate it with some custard for a quick pudding.

Plum Jam Crumble Muffins
Ingredients
140g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
35g caster sugar
1 egg

85 ml buttermilk or (normal milk with ½ tsp lemon juice)
50 ml sunflower oil
6 tsp plum jam

For the topping
35g self raising flour
35g light soft brown sugar
15g rolled oats
15g softened butter

Method
Pre-heat the oven to 190C and line a muffin tin with 6 muffin cases.
Start by making the crumble topping. Place all the crumble ingredients into a bowl and rub them together with the tips of your fingers until you get the appearance of rough breadcrumbs. Then set the bowl to one side.
For the muffins, place the flour, baking powder, sugar and mixed spice in a sieve and sift them into a bowl.
Measure out the oil and buttermilk into a jug and then beat in the egg.
Pour this wet mixture over the dry mix and gently fold everything together with as few folds as possible. (I find using a plastic spatula works best). Don’t over mix the batter, you want some flour lumps to remain.
Using a tablespoon, drop dollops of the mixture into the 6 muffin cases. You should use about two-thirds of the batter.
Then, using a teaspoon, add a small amount of the plum jam to the center of each muffin case. Cover the jam over with the remaining third of batter.
Sprinkle over the crumble topping and place into the oven for 20minutes.
They should look risen and golden brown when cooked.
Allow to rest in the tins for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire wrack to cool.
Makes 6 muffins.