Vanillicious.com – Easy Desserts

Best Muffin Recipe Ever

No, this is not just a catchy headline, these muffins really turned to be the best I’ve ever baked.

The credentials for this recipe and tips go to Natalie Levin, a pastry chef. As a big fan (well, and a muffin lover, too) I decided to give this recipe a try and since I just loved these fabulous muffins, I must share!

Some muffins tips before you go and bake these little wonders:

• The following recipe will make 12 normal sized muffins and will require 5cm bottom diameter muffin paper cases.
• This can be a great basic muffin recipe, and blueberries can be replaced with almost any other berry or fruit of your choice (raspberries, apricots, nectarines etc).
• When stirring, use a wooden spoon and mix only until all ingredients blend together. Don’t over-mix, and this will give your muffins the right, dense texture.
• Bake the muffins immediately. The longer the mixture sits, it’ll contain less leavening power.
• Bake the muffins until a skewer inserted in to the centre comes out with moisty crumbs, not totally clean. That will keep them soft for few more days.
• If necessary, these muffins can be freeze up to a month.

Click here to read up this recipe!

White Hot Chocolate

How to Sweeten and Warm Up a Cold Wintry Night

It’s a tradition. Every time we’re heading to Dublin’s city centre we treat ourselves with an amazing White Hot Chocolate drink at Butlers chocolate cafe’s.

The idea to start a homemade White Hot Chocolate tradition came during the big freeze. We stayed indoors during those cold weekends. Then we decided to try and make our White Hot Chocolate drink at home.

Brewing your own White Hot Chocolate is quick and simple, and requires very few, basic ingredients. If you are more of a milk chocolate enthusiast, you can replace the the white chocolate with it. If you like you drink to have a hint of coconut flavour, add 1 tsp of desiccated coconut after the chocolate had melted. Sieve the drink when pouring into the mugs. I have to confess, I like to eat the sweet warm coconut after sieving the drink.

Last note: the recipe I present is for two drinks, since part of the fun is to drink it with someone. Otherwise, just divide the portions.

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White Chocolate and Mascarpone tartlets

This dessert is very easy to prepare, the outcome looks impressivly sophisticated and tastes wonderful!

There are two phases when preparing the White Chocolate and Mascarpone tarts: 1. preparing the pastry cases 2. preparing the filling

The cases will be baked without the filling and this is called Blind Baking. When baking blind, we need to put some weight over the pastry base, so it won’t puff or rise. This is where the baking beans come for our rescue. You should line the pastry base with baking paper and fill it with baking beans. Baking beans can be either ceramic or dried ones. I usually use red kidney beans as they seem to be the haviest available, relatively cheap and are re-useable.

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Raspberry Blondies

Basically, Blondies are white chocolate brownies. So why not adding some raspberries, another favourite ingredient of mine, and have a feast of tastes?

I learned that this is the ultimate potluck solution, everybody’s satisfaction is guarantied! This is no surprise, though, knowing how perfectly the sweetness of the white chocolate and sourness of the raspberries combine.

Click here to read up this recipe!