The Ramblings of Guise Dugal

Space Ghost: Here’s a wonderful Nugget of Joy, from Zorak.
Zorak: We’ve all heard the expression “It’s as easy as taking candy from a baby”. But, have you ever thought about how accurate that expression actually is? I mean, think about it. Babies offer practically no resistance, and they’re easily distracted. Simply say “Hey! Baby! Lookit the nice doggie over there!” Then SNATCH the candy from their teeny little fingers and head for the-
Space Ghost: ZORAK!
Zorak: WHAT?
Space Ghost: That is simply despicable, encouraging viewers to take candy from babies!
Zorak: Well, ehh, I mean, uh – candy’s, uh, candy’s not good for babies. It’s, uh, bad for their – teeth.
Space Ghost: So what you’re saying is, when you take candy from a little bitty baby -
Zorak: I’m doing him a favor, for cryin’ out loud!
Space Ghost: Oh, come on! Babies don’t even have teeth!
Zorak: Eh – they don’t? I – I mean, I know they don’t! And you know why? Because they eat too much candy!

It’s time for another Cooking with Guise segment, and this time…it’s personal!

Or, individual size. Whatever floats your boat.

Today, I’ve been making something that I know will just be great. Warm, gooey, creamy sweet muffins. I like a good muffin, there’s nothing like it. Bad muffins may taste a bit stale, but still have much of the nibble-tastic flavour.

There are loads of wonderful moments when getting your muffin ready, you’ve got to beat up a good deal of sticky, tasty batter and then you’ve really got to get it hot, eventually when you’ve got a good enough rise you can just die in and devour!

So now, I’ll take you through the steps to ensure you’ve got a nice warm, sweet muffin ready for nibbling!

Cooking With Guise – White Chocolte and Raspberry Muffins
what did you think I was talking about?

Cooking with Guise – White Chocolate and
Raspberry Muffins
Originally uploaded by Guise Dugal.

After several trips to Costa, I decided I would try to emulate their wonderful White Chocolate and Raspberry Muffins. I searched around everywhere for a recipe, and finally found one. Unfortunately it called for four things I didn’t really have in stock: Ingredients; Equipment; Knowledge of Measurement Conversion; Patience.

I eventually tracked equipment, a muffin tray and muffin cases, down at Wilkinsons, and ingredients I got from several trips to Tesco. “What ingredients?”, I hear you ask, or would if you were nearby and asked, or cared. As it is, I’m just hearing voices in my head, they like talking to me.

1 cup milk
1/2 cup Butter, melted
1 large egg, slightly beaten
2 cups flour
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup fresh or frozen raspberries (do not thaw) / Slivers of Seedless Raspberry Jam
3 ounces coarsely chopped white chocolate baking bar

Now, I really hate cups and spoons, and not overly fond of ounces. I like a nice crisp metric measurement. I like measurements that are so exact you can tell failure from a decimal point. I am not a person who enjoys working out measurements based on a cup, and not sure if my cups are the same as the recipe makers cup, or if they mean level or heaped spoons.

So, I eventually worked out how much a cup was and then had to melt butter. I could have put it in a saucepan and burnt it that way, or in the oven and burnt it that way. I could have, but this is the modern age. I melted the butter with the power of radiation!

Now, I wanted to just drop a lump of uranium in to the butter or expose it to a reactor going critical, but I wasn’t sure about how many cups it would take. I just used the microwave instead.

I slopped the slightly beaten egg in to the mixing bowl with the milk. I wasn’t sure how much ‘slightly beaten’ was, am I meant to have tied it to a radiator and slapped with a hide whip whilst spraying it with ice water, or just smacked it with the fork like I did?

I then oozed in the radiated butter, a bit dropped on to my hand, I hope I wake up with super powers like that Parker kid. The amazing powers of BUTTER. Sliding abilities and super-lubrication. Actually, I hope I don’t.

I sloshed it around before adding everything except the chocolate and raspberry jam, and then mixed like crazy. I added the chocolate, which I’d taken my large Jason Vrhees knife to, and whilst swearing chopped (such coarse language, I’m just hoping it was enough).

I then started to fill the bottom half of the muffin cases in the muffin tray. After filling each case halfway, I dropped in the raspberry jam slivers. I then went to pour in the remaining batter.

I got though three of the twelve muffins and panicked at the realisation. I was way too low on batter.

Preparing with the same level of ingredients, and the batter came out completely different, more liquid. Whatever. On top it went.

I had some left over, so decided to pour it in to a cake tin and ‘experiment’.

In to the oven the twelve muffins and experiment went. Within minutes the smell wafted through the air. Mmm, warm muffin.

Roughly 30 minutes later out came the golden brown muffins, slightly more brown than golden in places, but it looked good.

The experiment came out as a jam bunny-cakey-biccie thing, being a rather thin cake, slightly bun like, but also biscuit hard in places.

End result: Mm, mmf mfmf nm mmm uhh mmfm. Ahhhh.