Tasmanian Lavender Muffin

 As usual, I went to Sayadaw's place to treat chicken broth, steamed fish and tasmanian lavender muffin. Sayadaw will stay here for 6 months and I plan to bring chicken broth, one dish and some desserts every Wednesday.

Last night, I was thinking what cupcake or muffin to bake for lunch treat. I suddenly remembered that I have some commercial style Australian muffin recipes. You must be curious how I got those recipes?

Surprisingly, not from internet. Two years ago, I asked my younger sister to attend a muffin workshop in Singapore and she got the recipes from there. The recipes are quite unique in term of ingredients and I was curious those. But I did not really try those until now. In fact, those recipes are not supposed to distribute or something like that because the instructor wrote in the recipes said the recipes is her own recipes and need her permission and etc.. I can't remember all. However, for good will, I want to share those recipe with anyone who want to try it out. 

Most of cupcake/ muffin recipes are similar in term of ingredients. I already have a few basic recipes by combing recipes I tried. However, whenever I see new recipes with a little change in ratio of ingredients only, I still want to try the recipes. Some turn out great and I want to keep those again. In the end, I have a lot of recipes just for cupcake/ muffin.

Today, I baked Tasmanian lavender Muffin as I bought lavender sometimes ago to do this muffin. I just Google and see what is "Tasmanian"? It is an island and state in Australian. Probably, this recipe is originated from there. The combination of cocoa taste and lavender flavor is quite unique. The lavender smell is good when in soap or fragrance. But in the food, most likely, we Asian might not appreciate it. If we like lavender flavor, then we might like this muffin. If not then, we are unable appreciate it.

The original recipe is creamy method that means cream butter and sugar first then add all other ingredients. I did not have enough time this morning so I melted butter and mixed everything and stirred very shortly. We can mix well other wet ingredients before adding dry ingredients. We cannot stir the batter a lot of strokes after adding flour as baked muffin will become hard. So I gently stir at most 4 strokes after adding flour.

I do not have self-raising flour on hand so I replaced with all purpose flour and 2 teaspoons baking power and it worked too. If we are the beginner in baking then, self-raising flour is a good start for baking muffin as the muffins rise high and look great. I added 5 - 10g milk or water to compensate the evaporated liquid during boiling process. The longer we boil, the stronger the lavender flavor. I have frozen blueberries so I added blueberries in between batter. Some people fold in the berries into batter. I prefer to add separately as berries will not anyhow stick to muffin pan.I made the half of this recipe and yields 6 standard sized muffins.

I usually did not use the cooking oil spray for baking sold at supermarket. In fact, those are good to use and muffins come out easily. But I don't want to spend extra money on that. I want to share a few experiments. I usually grease the muffin pan  with cooking oil or melted butter. My muffin pans are non stick but not expensive one so most of the times, muffin stuck in the pan and broke especially when greasing muffin pan with cooking oil. Greasing pan with melted butter gave better result, muffin come out in one piece. If I have a good non stick muffin pan then I may not have this problem.

Finally, I lined with cupcake liner and there is an another problem. Sometimes I made cupcake with sponge cake method, like folding  the egg whites into the batter, the cupcake deflated after baked due to the cupcake liner. I am supposed to take out cupcake liner for that kind of cake after baked but I don't want to waste it. So, I just leave it there and cool down cupcakes. Today, all my cupcake liners are used up and do not have any more extra.

So, I came up with another solution. Last time, I watched the cake decoration series on youtube and I saw the instructor uses the flour and shortening mixture to grease the pan. I have made the mixture and only use when baking the cake using butter-cream method . I line the baking tin with paper when baking the sponge cake as the sponge cake needs to rise on plain surface, not on greased one. I greased that mixture on muffin pan and baked today and muffins came out easily and still in a good shape. I will use this mixture to grease muffin pan from now on. I will try with sponge cake method muffin and see how it goes and will update next time.

 I  omitted the frosting part because I think we Asian people are not accustomed to eat very sweet and creamy topping. This recipe gives 12 standard sized muffins.

Ingredients:

• 130g butter
• 130g caster sugar
• 210g  flour {original: self-raising flour}
• 2 teaspoons baking powder{original: omit}
• 20g cocoa powder
• 120g milk , 5 to 10 g more water or milk to compensate loss liquid during boiling
• 55g yogurt
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon lavender
• 1/2 cup blueberries {original: omit}

Direction:

1. Preheat the oven  at180 degree C.
2. Grease or line 12-cup muffin pan with cupcake liner.
3. Boil the milk with lavender for  10 minutes, sieve the mixture (throw the lavender flower) with cheese-clothes and leave to cool.
4. Sift flour, cocoa powder and baking powder.
5. Melt the butter. {original: Cream butter and sugar till fluffy.}
6. Whisk eggs by hand, add sugar, yogurt and cool milk mixture and mix well. Add in flour mixture, melted butter and whisk 4 strokes. {original: Add in egg one at a time and mix well. Add in yogurt, milk mixture, flour mixture and mix well with spatulas.}  Do not over mix as muffin becomes hard after baked.
7. Scoop one teaspoon batter into muffin cup, top 4 to 5 blueberries and top the batter till 3/4 cup full. {original: Fill the batter into muffin cup till 3/4 cup full}. Bake for 20 -25 minutes.
8. Take out muffins from muffin pan and cool them on wire rack for 15 minutes. Keep them in air tight container. Do not keep hot or half cool muffins into the container as the muffins' surface becomes sticky.