Monday, July 26, 2010

Cheese & Bacon Mini Muffins

And they are oh so tasty! A quick snack, they do make. Bake up a mess of 'em on Sunday and toss a few in your lunch box throughout the week. If they last that long... which I doubt.

I got the idea for these from an Aussie cookbook circa 1972 titled Cooking With Wine & Cheese. 50 cents at a garage sale. And with a title like that I certainly wasn't going to pass it by. No sirree!

The recipe from the book, with it's frail, aged pages, did not call for bacon and some of the amounts were not what I'd use. Especially since they didn't use nearly enough cheese. Also, mine are made in mini muffin tins so they are bite-sized. Very handy. I also use different techniques and different ingredients. But I did get the idea from the book.

But you gotta like any recipe book that says to not only to preheat the oven but to also preheat the "irons". Irons? Yes, "irons" is what any type of metal (always cast iron) baking implement used to be called. These days you'll rarely hear the term outside of grey-haired camping aficionados as some still refer to campfire cooking implements as "irons".

Anyways, just use a muffin tin, no worries. Make sure you use the smallest you can find. These aren't called mini muffins just cuz, you know?

On with the recipe!

Cheese & Bacon Mini Muffins this makes 36 mini muffins

What you need:

1 1/2 cups self raising flour
1 tsp salt
3 tbsp full cream milk powder

1 tbsp butter

3 slices of Aussie sized bacon slices; diced, cooked and drained. 6 if you are using US sized bacon slices.
125 grams diced cheddar (equal to 5.33 ounces or 1/3 of a pound)

1 egg
2/3 cup water (H2O)


What you do:

Put the first 3 ingredients in a mixing bowl. Stir em up so they are combined. Add the butter and cut it in with a fork --if your butter is really cold you can use your fingers if you do it quickly.

Toss in the cooked & drained bacon pieces:
muff01



Mix it up so the bacon is coated. Then add the cheese:
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and mix it around so the cheese chunks are coated. Make a small well in the center of the mix and crack an egg into it.muff03



Add the water and beat the egg and water together.
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Grab a wooden spoon and mix the whole mess together!muff05



Grab your muffin tray and the spoons. I put a couple of table spoons on the tray so you'd get an idea just how small each muffin hole is.
muff06



Fill the tray with a decent sized spoonful of the mix in each muffin hole:
muff07
As I said earlier, you'll get 36 mini muffins or 3 tray fulls from this recipe.

You should have preheated your oven to 220 C (428 F) a while back. I'd recommend doing that first thing as the preparation doesn't take very long.

Bake them for 12 to 15 mins till they look something like this:
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Pop em out and put em on a cooling rack. Load the tray up for the next round. After a while your cooling rack will look something like this:
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That picture was taken after 2 of the 3 rounds were done. You'll notice there is not 24 of the buggas on the rack. They are, ummmmmm, very tasty and very easy to eat as you make them, well at least that's what I've heard. Great hot and great cold.

Make these and you'll be happy. So will your taste buds. So will your tummy. Just try not to eat them all at once.

4 comments:

Naturelady said...

Now this recipe is just PERFECT for all the cheddar I just smoked! I desperately want to bake SOMETHING, because it's COLD in the house.

As they say "The warmest winter I ever knew was a summer I spent in Alaska"...

Alaskan Dave Down Under said...

Naturelady: Smoked cheddar... DROOL! It should go perfect with this. Lemme know how it turns out.

I was chatting with a friend in Los Anchorage the other day, our winter day temps were warmer than her summer day temps.

sleuth said...

I just mixed up a batch of buttermilk artisan bread dough & will make up a variation of this in the morning!

Alaskan Dave Down Under said...

Sleuther: That should be great! Lemme know how it turns out.