Muffin Monday #2

Rhubarb, rhubarb,...it is been told in the www that the second Muffin Monday invented from Elena will be held on 30th April. She expects some unusual muffins you can't by at the stores that makes you go "Oooh".
Since she has anounced her first event I combined many, many ingredients together - in my head. For this event I decided to go for a spring theme:

Rhubarb-strawberry muffins with hazelnut crumble-topping
and with meringue-topping*

Ingredients for the 12 muffins:

100 grhubarb, peeled and chopped
20 gbrown sugar
20 gvanilla sugar

120 gstrawberries, washed and chopped
3 Tbspflour

250 gall-purpose flour, preferably unbleached, organic and stone ground
2 tspbaking powder
½ tspbicarbonate of soda
1egg
130 gfine sugar
125 gunsalted butter
180 mlmilk


Preparation:

Cook the rhubarb with the sugar with a about 1 tablespoons of water in a saucepan for about 5 minutes until the water is dissolved. Let cool.







Mix together with the strawberries and coat the fruits with flour.
Shift the flour, baking soda and bicarbonate of soda together in a bowl.
In a second bowl whisk the egg, then add sugar, salt, and milk. Wisk until well combined.
Pour in the flour mixture and stir just to wet the dry ingredients. Carefully fold in the fruits.



Spoon the batter in to the prepared molds. If you don't use a topping try to cover the fruit pieces with batter.

Pipe and/or crumble the topping on the muffins.

Bake on the preheated oven for about 30 minutes. If they're still not baked through, add 10 to 20 minutes baking time at 150 to 160 °C. (Mine needed 25 minutes at 180°C and 20 minutes at 160 °C, I'm not sure whether my ceramic molds caused that or something else.)
Let cool on a wired rack for 10 minutes in the molds. Serve still warm.



Ingredients for the crumble topping (make them ahead):

50 gall-purpose flour, preferably unbleached, organic and stone ground
50 ghazelnuts, chopped
50 gbutter, in cubes
¼ tspCeylon-cinnamon powder


Preparation:

Mix the ingredients together with your fingers until you have crumbles. Sprinkle them over some unbaked muffins.



Ingredients for the baiser/meringue:

2small egg whites (you can use the egg yolks for pasta making, ice cream, mayonnaise or as an eggwash, I poached mine in the soup I made this evening)
1hint salt
60 gfine sugar


Preparation:

Whisk the egg whites with the salt until soft peeks form. Add the sugar slowly whisking vigorousely.
Pipe the stiff egg whites on top of some unbaked muffins with a nozzle.
Sidenote: If you'd like to try this method, using a warm bowl, the merinque-topping will look better.



If I'd only knew before that they came out that delicious "Ooooh" that, with just 2 persons at home (the third one still at school, and the fourth abroad), I left with one single muffin to try, I'd baken double the amount. I could hardly make some pictures. So I'm going to bake them again this Thursday. With a different meringue topping.
I'll make it, like I mentioned above,in a warmed bowl and I'll fold in some puréed strawberries in the meringue-batter.

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So here I am again presenting you my third topping variation:

*Strawberry-Meringue

Ingredients for those meringues:

2egg whites (freeze or chill the egg yolks for baiser meringues/pavlovas, soufflés, maccarons, marshmellows, tuiles)
110 gcaster sugar
3drops vanilla essence
2strawberries, washed and puréed


Preparation:

Preheat the to 100°C.
Lay a baking tray with parchment paper and grease it with oil or butter.
Heat a bowl over boiling water. Put the egg whites in it and start whisking them vigorousely adding the sugar gradually, spoon by spoon. Whisk until soft peaks form. With a spatula fold in the puréed strawberries.
Fill the egg mixture into a pastry decorating bag and pipe some circles on the tray in the size of a muffin. Let them dry in the oven for 1½ hours. After 15 additional minutes in the turned out oven, let them cool on a wired rack. They are ready when they sound hollow when tapped with the fingertips at the bottom.

Place them on the muffins whilst baking them about 5 minutes (not longer as I did) before the muffins will be done. Or place them on the muffins as soon as they turn out of the oven.






After I added the strawberry-purée to the egg whites and tried the mixtures, I though it will be a good idea to make some floating island with them. Floating in a pistacchio-milk or a lavender-sauce or a sauce made with pandan leaves. I'll put this on my schedule for the next weeks and will show you the outcome.
Meanwhile I'm dreaming of peaches with pistacchio-crumbles or strawberry- or peach-brulée in pistacchiosauce or pistacchio-tarteletts with peachcustard or...

muffin monday