My Food Heroes – Piley’s Cappuccino Choc Chip Muffins

Not many people know but I’m not really into sweet things. I couldn’t imagine sitting down with a whole bar of Cadburys and devouring the thing in one small go. I’ve never liked chocolate and if I do get one I tend to savor each piece. A large Toblerone could last me a good month maybe longer. Easter eggs are just lost on me, all that chocolate and no belly to enjoy it. I’m not a chocolate bar or candy prude I guess I just only like certain sugar highs.

I do however like decadent sweet things; chocolate eclairs, chocolate ganache covered triple layered mousse, fudgey brownies, oh the list could go on. It’s that kind of sweet dessert that tickles the back of your throat and leaves u in an eye rolling ecstasy. Never experienced that before? Well we need to hang out, you have no idea what you’re missing out on!

One such gorgeous treat is my childhood friend Amy’s (Piley) Cappuccino Chocolate Chip Muffin Recipe. It may seem like just a muffin recipe but it is sooo much more than that. It represents an almost 15 year friendship. More than half of my life, these muffins have played their part. That day at school where she came into Afrikaans class with a whole box of muffins and cookies for sale. Yes Aimz I remember 😀 I bought one who knows how much for and the first bite had me addicted. I think I bought another 3 or 4 by the end of the day.

It’s always been a running joke that whenever Amy ever wanted me to do something for her she would repay me in muffins haha. It was actually discussed not even a few weeks ago. haha.  It got to a point a few times where I even bribed her to make them for me. I eventually decided I couldn’t treat my bestie like my foodie slave so I got the recipe myself and tried my hardest to match that delicious pouch of sweety goodness. Well I failed. It looked as if small aliens were sprouting out of the muffin tray. So I just decided to continually bribe my wonderful friend and probably will until we are old grannies sitting on the stoep at the old age home talking about that one time at band camp…

I will however attempt to once again recreate these little chocolatey angels for the sake of a few pictures and a walk down memory lane. The ingredients are simple enough to find in Korea, except buttermilk. That’s quite easy to fix though. Just some milk and vinegar and boomshakalaka.

Ingredients

500ml flour
15ml baking powder
125ml soft brown sugar
100g choc chips
50ml strong coffee granules
80ml water hot
100ml oil
100ml butter milk or plain yoghurt
2 extra large eggs
60ml milk

Instructions

1. Place flour, baking powder, sugar and choc chips into mixing bowl

2. Dissolve coffee in hot water and let it cool down.

3. Mix oil, buttermilk, eggs and milk with coffee and then add to dry ingredients to form a stiff dough, do not over mix!

4. Spoon into muffin tins and bake at 200 degrees for 20mins. Remove and cool.

CHEF AMY’s TIPS:

Try not to eat them all up yourself 😀

My School Kitchen – 5 Minute Chocolate Mug Cake

At my High School I’m blessed enough to be able to teach a wonderful but small group of students who are so interested in learning anything and everything that sometimes it can make my job extremely hard but rewarding. I decided to mix it up a little and have some fun. It’s getting to that time of the year especially in my little town of Seongju where the big jackets start coming out and the ondol (Underfloor heating) gets turned on. So I decided to do something involving warmth and excitement as apposed to sitting in a freezing cold classroom with blank stares.

I’d been following a couple foodies on Pinterest and one recipe popped up. Cake in a Mug. I’ve seen it countless times with all sorts of variations of ingredients and techniques and decided it was now the time to try it out. I remember a couple years ago my sister and dad tried it out and much to their dismay it ended up being a gooey dense mess. It tasted great but I wanted to perfect it. Lucky for me someone already had! I found the recipe from the Instructables website and went ahead with planning my cooking day.

My girls would each bring a mug and an egg and wonderful Che teacher would bring the rest. Flour, Oil, Milk, Cocoa, Chocolate Chips and Sugar.

The day started out great going through the recipe and making sure they understood the process and then it was time to get stuck in and get messy!! The recipe is extremely easy to follow and exciting to put together. Here’s the Recipe for an average size mug.

Ingredients

• 4 tablespoons flour 
  
• 4 tablespoons sugar
• 2 tablespoon cocoa
• 1 egg
• 3 tablespoons milk
• 2 tablespoons oil
• 3 tablespoons chocolate chips

According to the website it suggests that 1 egg is too much, 1 egg white is too eggy, 1 yolk is too dense, but 2 tblsp is just right! Unfortunately my students didn’t really understand why they couldn’t use the whole egg so it all went in lol.

1. Mix the flour, sugar and cocoa in the mug

2. Add the egg and mix extremely well.

3. Add the milk and oil and mix.

4. Once the mixture resembles a glossy fudgey goop you can add chocolate chips. We also added some mini snickers bars to ours.

5. Once that has all come together blitz it in the microwave for 3 minutes and boom your cake is done.

I really wanted to add in some delicious ice cream or even just whipped cream to the cakes but they were gobbled up pretty quick. I will definitely be making this at home this winter when my sweet tooth starts a calling, you should try it too!

Sylvia enjoying her cake