Cherry and Almond Super Massive Muffins

I often find myself in Costa eying up the gigantic muffins, so big you could share could eat all to yourself and be good to go for the rest of the afternoon mmmmm. Sadly this is followed by me eying up the price. Except it's not sadly at all. I see it as an opportunity a necessity to go home and create my own super massive muffins to rival those of all the coffee shops with the extra advantage of being able to put whatever flavours and ingredients I like into them. I am currently loving cherry and almond EVERYTHING - stay tuned for a cherry and almond scone post - so the tastiest muffins I could think of were... Cherry and Almond Super Massive Muffins! We are on the cusp of summer but the English spring weather (cough winter cough) sticks its gloomy head in our way a little too often and for those days cherry and almond makes the perfect almost-summer-but-still-a-little-chilly mid-morning, afternoon, whenever-you-fancy treat.

These muffins are DOUBLE almondy

because the glaze is made with a teaspoon of almond. I put 100g of cherries in my muffins which is definitely substantial as every bite had a cherry in, but as a glace cherry fiend I would up this to anywhere between 150 - 200g.

They are easily wrapped up in foil for transport, I like to take one to uni to have after my sarny! These muffins are moist and somehow get better with age, when I ate the last muffin in the tin (how rude of me) 3 days after baking it was still moist, if not more so, and I don't know if my taste buds were playing tricks on me but I am confident enough that is is the case to say the almond flavour had further developed and oh my they were tasty and fluffy and moist and light and I was SO disappointed I had shovelled the last one into my mouth - I think I will the double the recipe next time because they were snapped up pronto! Considering there is just two of us and this recipe made 10 HUMONGOUS muffins, three days and gone is a job well done!

I have never tried a streusel topping but my baking senses are telling me this would be a good thing to put on top of these muffins. I chose a pale pink almond glaze for simplicity, I wanted these muffins to be about nothing but pure, simple, mouth watering flavour and not about the numerous fancy schmancy gubbins you can add to anything to make it instantly better. I wanted to create a muffin so tasty you don't need nor want anything in addition.

Now, see the photo above? LOOK HOW BIG THE DOMES ARE. This is the first time I have made ANYTHING that has risen to such a great height and I came across the best way of achieving this by complete stupidity on my part. When I pre heat my oven I tend to crank the temperature right up in hope that my desired temperature will be reached sooner - I can be quite impatient! However when I made these I completely forgot to set the dial back to 170 degrees C for the first 5 or 6 minutes of baking time. When what I'd forgotten to do occurred to me and OH CRAP OH NO OH NO OH NO panic sat in I rushed over and found they had already risen! I then turned the dial back down to 170 degrees C (from about 220) for the remainder of the cooking time (about 20 minutes) and they were the perfectly huge domed muffins I was hoping for. The horrendous quality photo below shows you how much they had risen on removal from the oven.

This technique means you don't have to use copious amounts of raising agent to achieve huge muffins, and that you achieve bigger cakes using the same amount of batter (saves on the calories per bite if you care about that sort of thing as they are less dense - wonderful for a lighter cake!) I used a regular sized silicone muffin pan and completely filled the holes with batter. When adding the flour be careful not to over mix as this over works the gluten and makes for a heavier cake. Now on to the recipe!

Ingredients

(makes 10 large muffins)

130 g granulated sugar

65 ml vegetable oil (I used sunflower)

2 large eggs

1 tsp almond flavouring

1 tsp baking powder

145 ml milk (I used semi-skimmed)

150 g self-raising flour

100 g ground almonds

100 g glace cherries

Directions

1. pre heat the oven to 220 degrees C (Yes I know this is hot but see above to find out why!) and get all your ingredients out.

3. Cream together the sugar and oil. Once well mixed crack in the two eggs and beat in.

4. Add the flour and baking powder and mix in alternatively with the milk. Once combined to a smooth mixture add the ground almonds and the almond flavouring.

5. Chop the glace cherries in half and add to the mix. If you like cherries A LOT like I do then feel free to increase the cherry quantity but this isn't necessary as you do get plenty of cherries per bite as it is!

6. Pour the batter into a muffin tin, I like to use silicone ones so I don't have to grease or line and I didn't want to use muffin cases so I could show you all just how massive these muffins are! Make sure you pour the batter right to the brim of the tin and I mean right to the brim! I'm talking a hundredth of a millimetre off it flowing disastrously all over the top of the pan sort of right up to the brim.

 

7. Bake at 220 for 5-7 minutes then turn the dial back down to 170. PLEASE remember to turn it down or you will end up with horribly burnt muffins, wasted ingredients and a foul smelling oven! Continue to bake at 170 for 20 minutes depending on your oven, until the tops are crackly and golden brown. Remove from the oven, wait to cool and...

8. ENJOY! :)