Muffins Or Cupcake?

Muffin or Cupcake? What is the main different and how do I know I did end up with muffin when I use a muffin recipe and cupcake when I use a cake recipe?


I baked another batch of Chocolate Chip Muffins on Queen's Birthday before I get on to prepare next day lunch box. Found another Nigella's recipe which is fast and easy from Sarah's blog link. This recipe uses oil! Hooya! I'm just too lazy to weigh the butter and melt it or take my beater out and beat butter and sugar together.


All it need is a wooden spoon, a large mixing bowl and a measuring cup. I start by preheating the oven while gathering all the ingredients. Place all the dry ingredients into the bowl and combine all the wet ingredients into a large measuring cup. Pour the wet into dry ingredient and mix everything together using the spoon. Think most important while making muffin is try not to over mixed the batter which I find it extremely hard! Lumpy batter = Good muffin. 


Minster love the muffins. Anything with chocolate chips, he will like it. Easy to please right? I took 2 muffins to work and gave 1 to my colleague. He had it for tea and send me a sms after praising it's a nice muffin. I didn't tell him it's a muffin. Does it mean I manage to achieve the correct texture of a muffin? Or cupcake is still not such a huge thing here down under?

Comfort food - Mince Chicken with 3 Eggs(salted egg, century egg and egg) Congee

 Congee with You Tiao(chinese donut)


Congee is definitely my comfort food. I love love love congee, a bit of white pepper, drizzle a little sesame oil and I can have 2 HUGE bowl at a time. Though it's my favourite food, it's definitely not for Minster. It's one of the few dishes which he dislike. I even have to force him to have congee when he's sick. But recently he's beginning to accept it and able to finish a reasonable potion by himself. c") 


There's a huge variation in congee: Teochew style, Cantonese style. Different country has their own different way of cooking congee too.


My favourite is cantonese congee. White rice is cooked till it's totally dissolved. Texture of the congee is smooth, like thick liquid. It's not easy to achieve that consistency. Long hours constant stirring standing in front of the stove is required. 

My trick to shorten the process but still able to achieve that is to

# 1 - Use broken rice

# 2 - Soak the rice as long as possible (Best is overnight)

# 3 - Use my tiger thermal pot!!! It not only save on gas bill, it also save me a lot of time from standing in front of the stove and also chances of burning my congee is zero.

I also like to cook it with chicken stock if available instead of water to make it more flavoursome. I also like to diced up carrot, potatoes and dump everything in while cooking. It makes the congee sweet and I'm having my fibre intake.