Purely to support my good friend Shirley, I wrote this article. Recently I found that she's been learning to make weird food all the time, so I started to doubt what she is studying in the US, MS program or cooking? But being a good friend, I have to make some contribution to her blog. BTW, actually I wonder if she can post this one with my name.
The things you need to do before everything is to prepare your tools and materials.
OVEN - normal for the American families but not for us Chinese!
CAKE MOLD - the mold itself is like muffins, I know you know that.
EGG BEATER - I'm not sure whether I'm using the right word or not, but don't you agree the name is cool? Beat eggs! Oh, another thing, I strongly recommend an electronic one to beat your eggs, unless you want more muscles.
FLOUR - there is a name in china called "Di-Jin" flour, I confuse how to tell in English. Just "U-KNOW- WHAT" flour! (Shirley: IT'S CAKE FLOUR MAN...)
HONEY - honey! Honey! Honey!
BUTTER - It is said that New Zealand produces the best butter, but I insist the Irish is the best.
OLIVE OIL - I dunno if this is a right thing, I just think it's cool to be added into muffins.
SUGaR - have u heard Taiko sugar? Choose it for no reason but the high price. LOL
EGGS - chicken eggs. I use the egg we call it "Cao egg" or "Tu egg". I won't explain...........OK, I can't explain.
MILK - fresh milk, water will be OK, but I want the best taste.
Yeast Powder - I'm not sure if this is useful, I haven’t tried. But I'm sure without it your cake will be a little too wet inside.
Let me see..........OK that's all.
Now let's start to make muffins.
First I used 2 eggs; I planed to make about 6 muffins. Use some special technique to separate egg white and yolk, put them into bowls. There's two ways to separate them, all technical, so I'd rather not to say.
Second, we need to prepare the yellow bowl (You know, the bowl you just put yolk in). Don't touch anything IN the bowl, just remember what you need to put in.
a. Honey. Not too much. Honey is basically different from sugar, it's not too sweet, so more honey will be OK.
b. Flour. I found a spoon and I believe, without any doubt, one spoon flour is one muffin. LOL
c. Butter. Butter is complicated, because you have to melt it first. Luckily I have a microwave oven, unluckily I forgot to use cling film. Trust me, you don't need it but your microwave oven do. Then it put in.
d. Milk. The amount of milk or water is totally art, it is based on how much four you're using. I don't know how to control actually.
e. Yeast powder. This is complicated too. You must put a little, and very little powder into a smaller bowl (you see I like bowls), let's call it yeast bowl. Then mix the power with 15℃ water. Then put into yellow bowl. After putting all these stuff together, mix them like a creep, not too sweaty (is this adj right?), and then we put the yellow bowl aside and wait.
Then, we need to prepare the white bowl. It's easy, put enough sugar into it, more than you think it would be. OK, here is our hero the great electronic EGGBEATER comes! High speed beating until everything in the bowl becomes bubble, and then turn to low speed to BEAT big bubbles into small oness. After all these done, we are ready.
Next, slowly mix white bowl stuff into the yellow bowl, remember SLOWLY. You will feel that the stuff in the yellow bowl will be fluffy and wet. So we combine yellow bowl, white bowl and yeast bowl into one bowl, let's call it the ULTIMATE bowl, cool!
OK, now we turn to molds we prepared. On my experience (tried twice, the first failed), we can make 6-8 muffins. Just a few drops of olive oil, drip into mold, use your finger, make them around your mold.
Here come the Ultimate bowl. Just fill mold with the stuff in Ultimate bowl. Remember 70% full will be quite enough.
Then, pre-warm your oven without anything to 200℃ for 5 minutes. The we put baby muffins into it, another 5 mins in 200℃, then turn to 160℃ for 16min. When you feel it's all right, it's what I bought yesterday, it's OK. BTW, I'm very unconfident in the temperature and the time, so Google it first before you do it.
OK, we are done. Hope you enjoy. I myself enjoy the cooking but not the food I cooked. You don't want to know why!
