A cross between a moelleux and a muffin and it's goooood!

I love taking risk in the kitchen but I’ve learned that when the risk involves anything to do with baked goods, more often than not, you end up with a flop. Sometimes though, good things happen when you experiment.

I’ve been thinking a lot about moelleux and coeurs coulants lately and I even decided to rename the American version of this delicious French dessert to, “Deliquesce” because the American term, “Lava Cake” offends me. I’ve also been craving good, old fashioned American muffins. So what’s a fusion lover to do but combine them?!

Last week I baked banana muffins with pecans and a center of speculoos cream. They were delicious but despite using 4 ripe bananas, the muffins were still not as moist as I wanted. I used 2 cups of flour, next time I will use only one cup.

Today I decided to improvise with some apple muffins with a center of caramel and I wanted them moist! The original idea was to push a soft caramel candy down into the center of the muffin but after searching my local Monoprix over with a fine tooth comb, no pure caramels were to found (only chocolate covered caramels). I opted for caramel spread instead.

I used a large portion of vanilla applesauce plus one half of an apple as well as brown butter and muscovado sugar.

What I ended up with looks more like moelleux than a muffin but the muffin batter did bake through completely so there are no raw ingredients. The result taste spectacular!

The flavour of apples is very apparent and that’s exactly what I wanted. The caramel center is creamy and gooey and oozes out and the praline and almond topping adds some texture dimension.

Photos of the ingredients are on the Facebook page. Here is the recipe:

Muffin Deliquesce of Apple and Caramel

2.25 cups of vanilla apple sauce

2 medium eggs

1/2 cup of packed muscovado sugar

1/3 cup of melted brown butter

1/2 apple – peeled and diced

1 1/2 cup flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

7.5 grams (or one packet) of vanilla sugar

1 rounded teaspoon of caramel spread per muffin

Shaved almonds and praline crunch (optional) to sprinkle on top of muffin

Brown butter by melting it and keeping it on the heat until it turns a light to medium brown colour.

Combine all of the wet ingredients  in a bow, plus the peeled, diced apple and muscovado sugar.

In seperate bowl combine the flour, baking powder and soda and vanilla sugar.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix thoroughly.

Allow to sit for 10 minutes.

Fill each muffin mold only half way full. Then add one rounded teaspoon of caramel spread to the top center of each muffin. Follow by covering the caramel with the remaining muffin batter. Top with shaved almonds and praline crunch and bake at 340° for 30 minutes.

Allow to cool for thirty minutes before removing the muffins from the mold. NOTE: these are like a moelleux and will require care in removing them from the mold but the muffin batter should be completely baked, only the caramel should be runny.

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