Jam doughnut muffins

Yep, it's that time again - Sweet and Simple Bakes. I haven't managed either of the last two months bakes (allergic to nuts for the carrot cake, and simply ran out of time for the orange drizzle cake!) but you can check out everyone elses lovely looking entries in the round ups on the Sweet and Simple bakes blog.

This month's recipe looked far too good to pass by though, so in a fit of organisation I managed to make and decorate these and even post about them on time! I won't repeat the recipe here, I followed it just as it is set out here, on the sweet and simple recipes blog with only a couple of minor adjustments - I used self raising flour and reduced the baking powder to 1 tsp, I used blackcurrant jam because that's what I have open at the moment, and I probably used salted butter and omitted the pinch of salt (although I can't remember for sure!).

The only point I would make about the recipe is that the topping ingredients seem way too much for the muffins. I thought 100g butter sounded too much (nearly 10g for each muffin seems excessive!!!), so only melted 50g, which was still far to much, in my opinion. I think I would start with 20g butter and then melt some more if necessary. I'm also pretty sure that I didn't use nearly as much sugar as stated, although I didn't measure it, but just sprinkled it on until it looked about right!!! These are definitely best eaten on the day of baking/decorating - I found that by the next morning most of the sugar had dissolved into the butter, so the end product didn't quite look like the photos here, which were taken just after I'd decorated them. Like Rosie says, these are great warm - you could try warming them in the microwave too - although beware because the jam will get much hotter than the surrounding cake!

However, they went down well and I think were generally enjoyed at work. The cake was soft and moist and the jam was a good contrast. I think my tsp of jam was a bit mean though (entirely my fault, not the recipe!) so next time I'd be more generous with it. I was impressed that it attempted to stay in the middle of the muffin though - not all of the jam sank to the bottom, which drew a few questions as to how I'd managed it - magic!!!