Chocolate and Orange Crumble Muffins

The initial recipe for this contained raspberries but as I made these in New Zealand where it was winter they were pretty hard to come by. So I replaced it with orange which undeniably goes with chocolate. 

I made a normal chocolate muffin mix. Then at a final stage you add in the pieces of orange and some orange zest.

Demonstrated here by my other cousin Jake. 

They are then put in to baking trays. And you make a chocolate crumble - chocolate, sugar and butter made in to crumbs.

The crumble is sprinkled across the top of the muffins as generously as you like.

They are baked.

The muffins themselves were moist (eww, horrible word) and light but to be honest they probably would have been nicer with raspberries. But I would still give it ago.

New Zealand Madelines

While I was in New Zealand over the summer holidays I found out that my relatives who live there had a Madeline tray. So it was whipped out and the opportunity was seized by all.

The mixture for madelines is very similar to that of a sponge except it has a lemon in it.

You start by whisking the sugar and eggs.

Demonstrated by my cousin Kiri

 You then add a lemon, in this case from their lemon tree in the garden.

The lemon rind has to be grated off in to the mixture, the rest of the lemon can be discarded.

Then the remaining ingredients are added and whisked to the normal cake mixture. 

You then dollop the mixture into the madeline tray and bake for about 15 minutes. 

They then come out of the tray and due to the lovely shape of the mold they look quite nice even if they are slightly burnt.