Baking extravaganza: Muffins

I'm one of those irritating people who posts their food all over the internet. I do so for my outfits and nails too. My excuse is that I'm a girl. Not saying that all girls do it or no guy does it but I guess guys are not motherly proud of their pancakes as I can often be. Thank heavens I don't have pets! So. Much.Spam.

Sometimes some people ask me for the recipes especially if I have baked something. The problem is that I usually bake... well, out of my ass so to speak. I have few basic quidelines written down like how many eggs to which amount of flour. But I never stick with the recipes I read, I get inspired from them but then I just do as I feel like along the way. I trust my baking skills enough to know how the dough should look like when I want it to become buns or muffins (trust me, there's a big difference).

I thought it's time to "help a brother out" and make few of my favourite basic guideline recipes public. If you have abso-no-fucking-lutely any idea what you're supposed to do in the kitchen, then follow the instructions. If you are a wizard in the kitchen, you might find these too easy for you. The thing is though, because of my diet I bake with many untraditional ingredients. Even if you know what you do in the kitchen but you have never baked with gluten free flour, you might wanna get some basic idea out of these.
If I have to start listing to people what I don't eat, the answer usually is "what do you do eat then?". The answer is "less crap". Trying to avoid wheat will change anyone's life but for a sweet-tooth like me it has been a good struggle. But these days I appreciate fresh and natural flavours more than I used to and cooking isn't so much about the end product than it is about the ingredients. Soon it'll be summer again and the marketplace will be full of temptations. Fresh herbs! Summer potatoes, mmm. Strawberries! If you can't bake, you can never go wrong with strawberries and vanilla ice cream.

Entertaining guests can be tricky sometimes because you can never know who can eat what. That's why lactose-free vanilla icecream and fresh berries is a safe choice. But it might not always be available. My all time favourite thing to bake is:

You need roughly:
2 cups of flour
1 cup of sugar
2 teaspoons of baking powder
2 teaspoons of vanilla sugar
½ cup of cream
½ cup of other liquid
2 eggs
100g of margarine

Mix together the dry ingredients, then add the rest in order and mix well. Put in those little muffin paper thingies which name I don't know and bake in 200 celsius in the middle of the oven for around 15-20 minutes.

Tips: The dough should be creamy and runny. Careful not to put too much flour. Put two paper muffin thingies on top of each other so they won't lose their shape while baking. Use brown sugar instead of half of the original white sugar and the muffins will be beautiful in color and taste amazing. With brown sugar once again you don't have to worry about allergies. The cream can be milk, the additional liquid can be babyfood (like apple chutney), the margarine can be butter. The possibilities with muffins are endless. You can add real chocolate or chocolate powder, you can add nuts, fruits, berries, juice, vanilla sauce... Once I made muffins from lemon juice and salty liqourice, wasn't bad at all. Sky's the limit. If you don't want flat muffins, use regular flour or add a spoonful of psyllium to the glutenfree flour. You can check that the muffins are done by sticking a wooden toothpick in them. If something is stuck on it, the muffin is still too raw.

For the un-american bakers, a cup is roughly two desilitres. But everything in my recipes is "roughly" anyway.