It’s been a few weeks again unfortunately – I’m still not
convinced about this working full time business. Anything that cuts down on my
baking time is not acceptable! Luckily I managed to carve out the whole of
Thursday this week and spent most of it baking.
To start with, I baked this year’s Christmas cake. I started
to see the stands full of ingredients in the shops last week and took it as a hint
to get organised. On Wednesday then, I found myself making the house toxic with
brandy fumes...on Thursday I spent 10 minutes cutting out strips of greaseproof
paper to fight with/line the baking tin with, baked, wrapped, cooled, wrapped
again before stuffing the cake into a tin to drown in brandy once a week until
Christmas. It’s a lot of effort but so worth it in the end!
Following this then I wanted something quick and simple to
bake. Muffins fit the bill but in order to make them a bit more interesting I
decided to develop an idea I had a while back, to bake cheesecake mixture into
them. Last time, I’ll admit I took the easy way out and used a pre-made mixture,
however this time I decided to whip up a very basic cheesecake filling myself.
So idea planned and recipe written...and then I realised I’d
used cheesecake in my last two recipes. Originality is clearly not my strong
point at the moment! I’ve obviously just got cheesecake on the brain, it is my
favourite dessert after all! So yeah, cheesecake again I’m afraid! I’ll leave
it alone for a while now I think, I suppose there can sometimes be too much of
a good thing!
Some Final Tips Before You Get Started:
- As ever with muffins, mix as little as possible – just combined means just combined.
- Make sure the butter is cool before adding it to the other liquid ingredients.
Blueberry
Cheesecake Muffins
Ingredients
For the Cheesecake Mixture:
240g Cream Cheese
50g Caster Sugar
1 Egg
½ tsp. Vanilla Extract
350g Plain Flour
Pinch of Salt
2 tsp. Baking Powder
½ tsp. Bicarbonate of Soda
160g Caster Sugar
70g Unsalted Butter (melted and cooled)
270ml. Buttermilk
200ml Whole Milk
1 Egg
½ tsp. Vanilla Extract
125g Blueberries
12 hole muffin tin.
1) Preheat
the oven to 170◦C and line a muffin tin with muffin cases. To begin, make
the cheesecake mixture by stirring together the cream cheese and sugar. Add the
egg a little at a time and stir until smooth. Finally mix in the vanilla
extract before placing the mixture into the fridge to chill.
2) In a large bowl, sift together the flour,
salt, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda. Add the caster sugar and stir
together briefly.
3) In
a large jug, combine the melted butter, buttermilk, milk, egg and vanilla
extract. Whisk together until combined.
4) Add
the wet ingredients to the bowl of dry ingredients and mix until just combined.
The mixture should still be lumpy. Add the blueberries to the batter and
briefly stir until evenly distributed throughout.
5) Divide
the batter evenly between the muffin tins. Top with a teaspoon of the
cheesecake mixture and swirl briefly with the muffin batter. Bake for 35
minutes until golden brown. Leave to cool completely before eating.
