Chocolate Muffins (with a secret ingredient)

Sneaky Bastards

And the secret ingredient is ..................................mashed sweet potato! Or Kumera, if you are married to a Kiwi.

Muffins are popular in this household. I seem to have broken/worn out/burnt out the engine on all my kitchen devices that mix, so making these is great because there is no creaming of sugar and butter. Also, everyone likes to eat them, so bonus! I didn't set out to hide vegies from my kids, but I did notice that the child who turned his nose up at dinner the night before happily scarfed down 6 muffins. Just sayin!

This is a recipe that I have adjusted from a Nigella recipe. It is a good basic (read flexible) recipe, I've made it as lemon & poppy seed, strawberry vanilla, choc chip, red velvet, banana; just add in whatever is in season, or whatever you like to eat. I often make extra mashed kumera at dinner so there will be leftovers to turn into muffins.

Basic Muffins

Dry Ingredients - mix these together in a bowl.

• 200g of plain flour
• 2 teaspoons of baking powder
• half a teaspoon of bicarb soda
• 150g sugar (whatever kind you like - I often use raw sugar, but white or a mix of both is fine)

Wet Ingredients - mix these together separately, then mix into the dry ingredients.

• 60g melted butter
• juice of 1 lemon
• 120ml of milk
• 1 egg.

For chocolate kumera muffins, I added 50g of cocoa powder into the dry ingredients and 1 cup of cooled cooked mashed kumera to the wet ingredients.

Combine well - I know most muffin recipes say to not over mix but the action of the bicarb, milk and lemon juice means that your mix will become very aerated, almost like mousse. It needs to mix properly for this reaction. Baking is a science!

I made these as mini muffins, with muffin papers (because I am lazy) and baked at medium heat for about 20 minutes. Every oven is different so check them after about 15 mins.

Nom nom nom.

Happy baking!