blueberry muffin and cheese muffin

That’s my pal A’s hands holding up the muffins. 🙂

On a recent company-paid vacation trip to Pulau Tioman in Malaysia, we had to wake up at 4 am and meet at the Singapore Flyer to take a coach at 6 am. At that hour, the only breakfast you can get is MacDonald’s. I did not want to eat MacDonald’s for breakfast, nor did I want to buy bread. My taste buds are pretty choosy these days.

So on the night before the trip, I got to work on these amazing muffins, whilst waiting for the laundry to be done. It took an hour’s time, from preparation to baking and washing up, to make 12 perfectly moist, wonderfully fragrant and delicious muffins.

In Singapore, the craze for muffins was quite rampant about 5 years back. It all started with this small hawker stall at Shunfu Market, called Chocolat N’ Spice. People would come from all over, to queue for 30 minutes for these muffins. Their muffins were such a success, they have since opened 2 more outlets. Check out their website here.

I love their cheese muffin. It was a sweet muffin with a cheese square in the center. Eaten when warm, the sweet fluffy cake with the melty salty cheese is out of this world.

I tried to recreate that muffin. I wondered on what type of cheese to use. I tried my luck, bought this cheese and I think I might have gotten the cheese right. 🙂

Blueberry muffin and cheese muffin (adapted from Joy of Baking)

260 grams all-purpose flour
150 grams castor sugar
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
80 grams unsalted butter, melted
2 medium eggs
240 ml plain yogurt
1 tsp vanilla extract
250 grams blueberries, washed and patted dry
15 cubes of laughing cow cheese

Preheat oven to 200 C. Line a 12 hole muffin pan.
In a large bowl, mix flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt together.
In another large bowl, mix butter, eggs, yogurt and vanilla extract.
Slowly pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, mixing with a fork while pouring. Do not over-mix. Stop when the ingredients are just combined and there are no large pockets of flour left. Mixture will be lumpy.
Divide batter into 2. Or, if like me, you want to wing it, just scoop the batter into 6 of the prepared liners till about 1/2 full. Place 3 cubes of cheese into each muffin and scoop in another tablespoon of batter over the cheese cubes.
Add blueberries to remaining batter and gently fold in. Scoop into the remaining 6 prepared liners.
Bake for 5 minutes on 200 C, then reduce temperature to 190 C and bake for another 18-20 minutes. Muffins are done when a toothpick in the cake comes out clean.
Cool on wire rack slightly before removing from muffin pan. Enjoy.

Surprise surprise, I increased the sugar in this recipe! It tasted just nice. Even when cold, the muffins were great. 2 days later, the blueberry muffins were slightly wet because of the copious amount of berries inside but it was still good. The cheese muffins did not survive past the 2nd day.