The perfect muffins

One fine day my sister got bitten by the baking bug so she baked these muffins. I wanted appropriate sunlight to take good pictures of them. The days went by but it seems the sun just refused to shine with all its intensity on purpose.

Today was yet another day of this nature until it dawned upon me that the sunlight might never be the way I want it to be and by waiting any further there might not be any muffins left at all to shoot considering the speed at which they were being consumed.

There is no point in waiting for the 'perfect light' or a 'perfect moment' in life. We have to grab whatever is available to us right now and make the most out of it. So I finally shot the muffins.

Chocolate Chip Muffins

1 cup milk

1/3rd cup vegetable oil

1 egg

2 cups flour

1/2 cup sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup chocolate chips

Grease muffin tray with oil or line with paper cups. Its always a good idea to use paper cups as it saves you the trouble of washing the muffin tray later.

Preheat oven to 400ºF/205ºC. Beat milk, oil and egg. Add sugar and beat.

In a separate bowl mix flour, salt and baking powder. Add to above mixture and beat well till smooth. Stir in chocolate chips.

Divide batter equally among muffin cups. Bake for 25 minutes.

This recipe makes 12 muffins. Original recipe can be found here.

Devour the chocolate

At Nando's restaurant they have this delicious chocolate cake slice. So far it is the yummiest cake slice I have ever tasted.

Since the past few days we were longing to have it and the feeling would not go away.

Sadly there's no outlet of Nando's in our city. This left us no choice but to hunt for a recipe that would give us a closest replica to that divine cake slice so me and my sister baked this cake. Recipe is by chef Rahat.

Chocolate Cake

125 g butter

1 and 1/2 cups flour

2 eggs

3/4th cup cocoa powder

1 cup regular sugar

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

1 teaspoon baking soda

Preheat oven to 180° C/350° F.

Grind sugar in chopper and keep separate.

Beat eggs with vanilla essence.

In a separate bowl mix together: flour, sugar, cocoa and soda. Add butter, eggs and milk. Beat till mixture is smooth.

Pour batter in greased baking pan.

I would advise to line bottom of pan with butter paper and then grease it a little with oil because it helps to remove the cake easily from the pan when baked.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or till knife inserted in center comes out clean.

For the icing:

Always cool the cake completely before icing it.

For the icing I followed the instructions here. Made a few exceptions though. I used 200g fresh cream and 1 tablespoon cocoa powder with 1 tablespoon sugar.