Chocolate custard muffins, plus a competition

[lepard]

Chocolate custard muffins

Roger Pizey has been Marco Pierre White's pastry chef right from Harvey's restaurant in '87, and is undoubtedly one of the finest pastry chefs in the country. His book "Small Cakes" (Jacqui Small) is out this month and we've got a competition to win a signed copy. Email a pic of your best small cake to guardian@danlepard.com before the 5th of May to enter. I've put a few pictures from Roger's book on the website at www.danlepard.com/guardian and will put your entries there when I get them.

Do you have a favourite small cake, or one you can't stand (I hate chocolate crackles made, Oz-style, with a white fat called Copha) then join Kate Carter on the Guardian Word of Mouth Blog and let us all know about it.

To start you off, here's my recipe for the best chocolate muffin you'll ever eat.

50g cornflour
3 level tbsp cocoa
100g dark soft brown sugar
225ml cold water
75g unsalted butter, cubed
125g dark chocolate, broken small
75ml sunflower oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
125g caster sugar
125g plain flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder

Make the custard first: place the cornflour, cocoa, brown sugar and water into a saucepan and whisk together constantly over a medium heat until boiling, very thick and smooth. Remove from the heat, beat in the chocolate and butter until melted and absorbed. Add the oil, vanilla and one of the eggs and beat again until combined, then add the remaining egg with the caster sugar and beat until smooth and thick. Measure the flour and baking powder into a small bowl, stir together then sift this directly onto the custard and beat through until combined. Spoon into a dozen paper muffin cases sitting in the pockets of a muffin tray, heat the oven to 180°C/350°F/gas 4 and bake for 25 minutes.

[lepard]

The baking has begun. Liz Jefferson emailed this pic of the recipe above as her entry in the competition:



and blogger Nurani on her site:
http://susilo.typepad.com/nurani/2008/0 ... hocol.html

[Juleswest]

I made a batch last night for my kids' school cake sale. I kept a few back to bring in to work this morning, and my colleagues are highly delighted with them! They're delicious, but I'm slightly concerned that they may send some of the children into some kind of chocolate psychosis! I hope I don't have to face the wrath of their parents tomorrow...! Perhaps I should have put a For Adults Only sticker on the tin...

[Juleswest]

I made them again last weekend, and they were awesome. Over half-term, I revisited several of my favourite recipes - Rye apple cake, caramel layer cake, marrakesh loaf, banana bran muffins...they improve each time I do them. I'm tempted to have a go at the poppy seed loaf, as I absolutely love it but I'm slightly intimidated by the recipe. I know I should face my fear...

[lepard]

Really pleased they've gone down so well! The poppyseed loaf isn't difficult at all, it just takes a long time. It is big but it freezes well.
Dan

[Ellery22]

Thanks for the recipe. I made them for a friend's "Comics and Music" Night in the pub last week, along with a Cookie Feast Pizza - comics and music are best appreciated with plentiful supplies of refined carbohydrates and booze. I like these - they are easy to make and it saves on the washing up. Also, they are yummy.

[Sue-L]

I've finally got round to trying these, after some discussion of them on the BBC Food Messageboard.

It's the first time my son has preferred a home-made muffin to a bought one, so in this house they must be declared the best chocolate muffin ever!