Dark chocolate bacon muffins

 

My friend Rosie created a facebook group about baking with a different challenge every week which all the members of the group get to vote on.  This week was muffins.

So I made Dark chocolate bacon muffins this evening. I also had a great cup of Chai with one, really adds to the flavour, the chai from Tea Palace is great, especially if you add a bit of extra cinnamon.

    

I used the following recipe from the bbc food page http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/dark_chocolate_bacon_85665

The thing I realised is that its a really odd texture when eating them and they will certainly be better with frosting im sure.  Andrew is also about to make some coffee muffins which is rather cute 🙂 im hoping he doesn’t do what I did and put too much mixture into the muffin cases.  Other than that they are generally pretty good.

Ingredients

• 12 slices pancetta, grilled until crisp
• 100g/3½oz dark chocolate, melted
• 225g/8oz plain flour
• 50g/2oz cocoa powder
• 250g/9oz caster sugar
• 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp fine sea salt
• 2 free-range eggs
• 50ml/2fl oz strong coffee, cooled
• 225fl oz/8fl oz soured cream
• 120ml/4fl oz vegetable oil

For the buttercream icing

• 150g/5oz unsalted butter, softened
• 150g/5oz icing sugar, sifted
• 100g/3½oz dark chocolate, melted and cooled slightly
• sea salt, for sprinkling

Preparation method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4 and line a muffin tin with paper cases.
2. Crumble two-thirds of the grilled pancetta onto a baking tray lined with baking parchment and cover with the melted chocolate. Allow to set before chopping into bacon chocolate chips.
3. Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, sugar, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl and mix well.
4. In another bowl beat the eggs, coffee, soured cream and vegetable oil until well combined, and stir this into the dry ingredients. Stir in the bacon chocolate chips.
5. Spoon the mixture into about 20 muffin cases, bake for 20-25 minutes.
6. For the buttercream icing, whisk together the butter and icing sugar. Fold in the melted chocolate.
7. Remove the cupcakes from the oven and allow to cool before piping the icing onto the cupcakes. Top with the remaining bacon pieces and a sprinkling of sea salt.