Cooking with Food Storage: Suprise Muffins

I have been making these muffins for quite a few years. I first learned about this recipe from the blog Safely Gathered In. Here is the original post. These muffins are a surprise to eat because there is jam in the middle of them!

Over the years, I have made a few changes to this recipe. In the past when I made these, they always tasted like corn muffins. Not that a 'corn muffin flavor' is a bad thing, but since I didn't make corn muffins, I really didn't want them to taste like I did! The changes I have made eliminate that - now they taste like regular muffins. If you read the original post, you will also notice that I don't follow the directions when making the batter. Here is my interpretation of this recipe.

Let's start with the recipe ingredients I used:
1 1/2 cups spelt flour
1/2 cup oat flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1/3 cup powdered milk (sometimes I use powdered buttermilk)
1/4 cup shortening
1 cup water
Jam of your choice (I used apple jelly and orange marmalade.)

Start with the dry ingredients. Add the first seven ingredients together and mix well. Then add the shortening. 

You can use a food processor to mix in the shortening if you would like. I cut mine in with a knife. It took about five minutes. Try to eliminate the big pieces of shortening. It should look very fine and crumbly. Here is a picture of mine.

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Then add the water. Mix the batter until moist. You will need to let this batter sit a bit to rest if you use whole wheat flour like I did. The batter needs to have more of a 'biscuit' consistency rather than a 'quick bread' consistency to hold the jam in the middle.

Grease the muffin tin or use paper muffin cups. Spoon 1 heaping tablespoon of batter into each cup. Then add 1 tsp of jam. On top of the jam, add another tablespoon of batter. The batter should make 12 muffins. In this picture, the muffin tin in the upper left corner is completely filled. The rest need the last tablespoon of batter.

A  word of caution here, if you add more than a teaspoon of jam, the muffin cup will overflow while baking. (Ask me how I know this!)

Bake in a very hot oven (425 degrees) for 20 - 25 minutes. Mine only needed 20 minutes. Since such a hot oven is necessary, this recipe doesn't work well in a sun oven.  Here is a picture of mine straight out of the oven.

I cut one open with the idea of showing you what they look like, but since I used a very light color jam, it didn't show up well in the picture. However, I can tell you, the jam surprise in the middle is really good!