Traditional Homemade Muffins

I don’t remember the last time I bought an industrial muffin... and when you try this recipe, you won’t either!

If you follow my instructions, you’ll get fluffy muffins with a high dome. They will also keep perfectly for several days.

You can flavor your muffins as you like: with the zest of a lemon or an orange, with vanilla extract or as I did today, with La Tourangelle almond oil, which has a delicious toasted almond flavor. If you decide to use lemon or orange zest, you should replace the almond oil with olive oil. So you will need 190 g of olive oil.

To bake the muffins, I always put paper liners inside my Le Creuset muffin and cupcake pan. This way they don’t deform and they rise a lot. I’ve mentioned the Le Creuset range of pans before: they are very sturdy pans, made of carbon steel and completely non-stick. I wouldn’t trade them for anything!

Le Creuset non-stick muffin pan and La Tourangelle almond oil

Ingredients (for 12 muffins)

• 2 large eggs
• 175g sugar
• 60ml milk
• 90g arbequina olive oil
• 60g La Tourangelle almond oil
• 2 teaspoons honey
• 210g cake flour
• 5 g Royal baking powder
• A pinch of salt

Note: All ingredients should be at room temperature. You can also use the mini cupcake pan, which will give you almost twice as many units.

Another good option is to use hazelnut oil or La Tourangelle walnut oil.

Method

1. In a bowl, beat the eggs with the sugar with a few whisks until they are very frothy. If you do it in the Kitchen Aid, use the whisk attachment and set your machine to medium speed for 5 minutes.

2. Add the honey, milk, olive oil and almond oil, and beat until everything is well combined.

3. Sift the flour, Royal baking powder and salt using a sieve or a sifter, and add it to the bowl where you have beaten the other ingredients. Mix until well incorporated and without lumps. If you are using the Kitchen Aid, mix at medium speed for a few seconds and then 1 minute at maximum speed.

4. Transfer the batter to a bowl that can go in the refrigerator. Cover well and refrigerate for 24 hours.

5. The next day, take the batter out of the fridge and beat with a couple of whisks. Preheat the oven to 250 ºC, top and bottom heat.

6. Place 12 paper liners in the cavities of the Le Creuset muffin pan and divide the batter among them. Sprinkle a little sugar over each muffin.

7. Put the muffins in the oven and lower the temperature to 190 ºC. In about 15 minutes they should be ready. Every oven is different, so you’ll know better than anyone if you need to add or subtract a minute from the time I recommend.

8. Remove them from the oven and wait 10 minutes for them to cool a bit. Let them cool completely on a cooling rack. You can store them in a metal tin or a glass storage jar for several days.

Birkmann cooling rack and non-stick muffin pan