Cherry Bakewell Muffins

If you're looking for a tasty muffin recipe then you can call off the search here. I was rather taken with these little muffins...when they came out of the oven they looked alright and I thought they'd be ok but actually they were really quite tasty! The taste testers concurred...so if you're a fan of the Mr Kipling cherry bakewells, I'm sure you'd love these.

The texture of the muffins is spot on and they're lovely and moist too as the recipe includes 175ml Greek yogurt. The flavour comes from 100g of ground almonds and also from the almond extract. I used Neilsen-Massey's Pure Almond Extract which is very good, they also manufacture lemon, chocolate, orange and coffee extracts.

 

 

The distinctive cherry flavour of the Bakewell comes from a teaspoon of cherry jam that is baked into the centre of each muffin.

When it came to the cases, these red and white spotty cases from Culpitt were the perfect addition to the theme. I would definitely recommend Culpitt cases as they come in vibrant colours but most importantly they're greaseproof and therefore retain their colour after they have been in the oven.

On the whole, I don't tend to bake the same thing twice but I may have to give these another whirl next weekend for a charity bake sale as they were so tasty!

Ingredients

150g golden caster sugar
1 egg
125g melted butter
175ml Greek yogurt
1 tsp almond extract (Nielsen-Massey recommended)
200g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
100g ground almonds
10 tsp cherry jam
150g icing sugar
Flaked almonds
5 glace cherries

Preheat the oven to 180c/160c fan/gas 4 and prepare your muffin tin with 10 muffin cases. These muffins are easy to make, have two bowls at the ready, one for the wet ingredients and one for the dry ingredients.

Mix the sugar, butter, egg, almond extract and yogurt in a bowl using an electric whisk. Sift the flour and baking powder into a separate bowl and then add the ground almonds. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix quickly, it doesn't matter if there are some lumps as apparently this helps to give muffins their texture. Spoon half the mixture into the bottom of the muffin cases, then add a teaspoon of cherry jam to each one. Finally, finish by dividing the remaining mixture between the cases to cover the jam.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, they should be golden and risen. Once the muffins are cool, make up the icing to a smooth but thick consistency and then spoon over the top of the muffins. Finish with half a glace cherry and sprinkle over some flaked almonds.

* Original recipe from BBC GoodFood