TWO TONE VALENTINE MUFFINS

The 14th February is a day set aside for the celebration of love and what better way to show your affection than by baking for your ‘loved one’ or indeed your friends.  The orange and chocolate flavours of these muffins combine to create (almost) a ‘marriage made in heaven’ – very apt for Valentine’s day!!  

AGA Cookshop products are great at doing more than one thing – rather like people really – and the AGA Portmeirion Ceramic Yorkshire Pudding Tray is a good example.  Great for Yorkshire Puddings, (I’m a fan and always use it when Yorkshires are called for) but also it can be used for making half a dozen large muffins or individual frittatas.

The muffin mixture is made by making up a three egg quantity of Victoria Sandwich cake mix (175g each of softened butter, caster sugar and self raising flour, beaten with the three eggs) then dividing the mix and adding 25g cocoa blended with 2 tablespoons of hot water to one half and grated orange zest into the plain half of the mix.  Just drop large size muffin cake cases into the AGA Portmeirion Ceramic Tray and place in alternate spoons of the two mixes, swirl through with a skewer to blend the colours.  The ceramic tray slides directly onto the second set of runners down in the cast iron AGA Baking Oven and is cooked for 25-30 minutes until risen and set.

When the muffins have cooled they can be decorated with some chocolate buttercream – if you have a little chocolate then melt it in a disposable piping bag, or freezer bag, on the AGA, snip off the point and pipe out a few chocolate heart shapes to adorn the top of the muffins.

 
If you are going to eat just two of these muffins the other four can be frozen, (without the chocolate heart decoration), for a later date.  As the AGA Portmeirion Ceramic Tray is freezer-safe pop it into the freezer and when the muffins have frozen remove them from the tray and store them in a suitable container.

By Dawn Roads.