Chocolate orange melt in the middle muffins

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January 24, 2013 by shelouliebaking

I know it’s been a few weeks since I last blogged and for that I apologise. I think I stumbled across the baker’s version of writers block. The last couple of weeks I have been totally and utterly consumed with needing to move house, which frankly was a bit of a bolt out of the blue. I have found all of my spare time has been spent looking for houses to rent and packing boxes.

I actually felt no inclination whatsoever to do any baking and I felt as if I lost my mojo!!! So I decided to force myself to make something in the last few days and actually came up with a fantastic little recipe.

I was given the standard chocolate orange for Christmas and it’s been sat around on the shelf for a few weeks and I came up with the idea of making a melt in the middle muffin and wanted to use slices of the chocolate orange to be the molten chocolate in the centre.

I read a few different methods of how to achieve a molten middle. Melting chocolate in cream and then chilling to make “truffle balls” and placing them into the middle of the batter was one option, and in the past I have used blocks of yorkie chocolate as it’s so thick I knew it wouldn’t entirely melt and that gave me a good result.

My challenge was making sure that the thin slices wouldn’t melt entirely during the baking process. Then I thought back to a tip I heard recently about cooking salmon in a tart…bear with me….

I decided to snap each slice in half and then put them in a sandwich in the freezer for a couple of hours. I figured that the chocolate would take longer to cook as it was a colder temperature, thus leaving a gooey middle…and BINGO… it worked a treat!!

I just used a basic chocolate muffin recipe, placed a spoonful of batter into each paper case> I then placed two halves of chocolate into the centre of the batter and then added another spoonful of batter over the top, ensuring the chocolate was sealed in.

20 minutes in the oven and I trusted my instinct that they were cooked enough. No point sticking a skewer in as they were meant to have a runny middle.

I left the muffins to cool completely and then when needed they were simply zapped in the microwave for 20 seconds just to re-melt the middle.

Work colleagues have raved about them for a few days so I’m guessing they were a success!!!!

So what will the next few weeks hold for my baking mojo….well I’ll try and leave my ingredients and equipment in the kitchen as long as possible before they absolutley need to be packed. So please bear with me if it’s a while before I’m hear again…but the good news I have a big new kitchen to move into so I’m sure that will bring my baking mojo back onto top form!

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