Double Chocolate Raspberry Muffins

I developed this recipe largely by accident. I went to see my cousin and decided to see what would happen if I added chocolate chips and raspberries to chocolate sponge cakes. She only had plain flour, however, and as I usually use self raising I completely forgot to add the baking powder. I suddenly realised this after we'd filled the cases and they'd been cooking 5 minutes. I cried disaster, but they were, in fact, better for the lack of baking powder. They were squidgy and chocolatey and generally amazing. So, here's the recipe. I plan on trying one where I whip the egg whites and fold them in, see what that does to the texture, but for now, here's my usual recipe. If you don't have any plain flour you can make them with self raising and they'll be lighter, but still tasty. 

The reason I make it with the raspberries frozen is that it means that you end up with whole raspberries in the cakes, but if you want a different texture then either smash them a bit when frozen or you could let them defrost. (Frozen raspberries also being the cheap way to buy nice fruit out of season!) I plan on doing some major raspberry picking in season this year and filling my freezer with fruit for baking!

6 oz marg

6 oz sugar

5 oz plain flour

1 oz cocoa

50 g choc melted (dark or milk)

6 oz raspberries, frozen

100 g choc, roughly chopped (dark or milk)

Splash of milk

1. Beat marg and sugar together until light and fluffy - ie wait until you see the colour change!

2. Add the melted chocolate (make sure it's relatively cool, so melt it before you start beating the butter and sugar).

3. Add the eggs one at a time, following each with a spoonful of flour

4. Fold in the flour and cocoa and then once that's mostly mixed in, add the raspberries and choc chips and fold them in. Make sure you fold them in well so there's lots of air in the mixture because there's no baking powder.

5. Add a splash of milk as the mix will be a bit dry. The mixture will go very cold because of the frozen rasps but that doesn't matter. 

6. Add to muffin or fairy cake cases, fill them fairly full as they won't rise much. 

7. Bake at 180C for 15-20 mins depending on your size of cake!

They don't really need anything on top. But you could either melt some chocolate and pour that on, or make some ganache:

100g dark choc

100ml double cream. 

Chop the chocolate up fairly finely and put into a bowl. 

Heat the cream in a saucepan until it boils

Pour cream over chocolate and stir until smooth and shiny. 

Then you can either pour it straight onto the cakes or leave to cool and then whip it up.