Caramel Muffins

This is a recipe I tried because of my co-worked, Tobias. Tobias doesn't cook. Or bake. He's the king of ready-made food. But he's learning, slowly, to eat better and to cook more. And he wanted to bake muffins. I directed him to Dagens Muffin, a great sit - in Swedish - with tons of muffin recipes. He fell for a recipe called Pia's Caramel Muffins, and so he tried to bake them. With disastrous results. The muffins rose way too much, and he ended up with an entire pan of muffins. He ate them with a spoon. Not deterred, he tried the same recipe, again, next weekend. With, sadly, the same results. He used less batter in the cups, but they still swelled and ran over. Again, he had to resort to eating them with a spoon.

So. As any good co-worked would, I offered to try the recipe myself. He agreed that it was a good idea, feeling pretty confident that I, too, would fail. However.. I didn't. I thought that maybe the recipe had too much baking powder, or that he had over-beaten the eggs, but as I used just as much baking powder, and beat my eggs vigourously, I don't think that was the problem. Bad baking karma, perhaps?

Anyway. The muffins are really tasty. "Hey, but where's the caramel?" you might ask. Good question. The caramel name comes from using the golden syrup, which definitely imparts a great caramel flavor. Next time, I think I'll try these with maple syrup - that would probably make them even more special. And they'd be fine with some kind of topping too, maybe caramelized hazelnuts?

Caramel Muffins
from Dagens Muffin
18 regular sized muffins

150 g butter
200 ml sugar (about 180 g)
3 eggs
75 ml golden syrup
300 ml flour (about 180 g)
2 tsp vanilla sugar
2 tsp baking powder

Beat eggs and sugar until fluffy. Melt the butter. Mix flour, vanilla sugar and baking powder in a separate bowl, and add to the egg-sugar-mix. Add the melted butter and the syrup.

Pour into paper muffin cups, taking care not to fill them more than 3/4 to the top. Bake in a 175°C hot oven for 15-20 minutes.

Pias Kolamuffins