Orange Cherry bread muffin cupcake– The Accidental Recipe Modified

Sunday 10^th April 2011, Recipe 20110410

I was in a bit of a mischievous mood when a friend of mine asked me to bake some bread for her. I know that she loves eating cherries so I thought I should give her cherry based bread. When I began mixing the ingredients I realised that I had not asked her if she liked her bread, hard, soft, savoury or sweet. If I had made her something with cherries it would definitely be a white bread and that means it would have to be a little sweetish. And a white bread meant no additives … wow no additives … what was I going to do? I couldn’t make her a loaf of wholemeal bread and add in the cherries.

 

The origins of the orange cherry bread muffin cupcake

 

Having already made chilli bread, I thought I would make something as colourful and of more pleasant taste than just plain white bread. … What you didn’t know about my chilli bread? Ok, I put it up on the next issue, also the cheese making experiments. Cheese? Yes I was trying to make cheese and it was a disaster recovery event of belly quaking magnitude. You will read about it soon.

Coming back to the cherries, … hhhmmmm … what could be good with cherries… I think orange. I bought a bottle of orange concentrate – Sunkist to be exact. It has some preservatives but I was going to risk it and see if the preservatives were of sufficient strength to kill of the yeast.

Now if I am going to mix in some orange concentrate I just couldn’t make it into bread. It had to be more ‘cakey’ than ‘bready’ so I decide add a little milk powder and plenty of butter. Then I thought if it was not going to be bread I shouldn’t shape it as bread and that is why I baked it in small muffin / cupcake trays. That is how the recipe evolved in my head. So this is my mischievous ‘crack’ accidental orange cherry bread muffin cupcake recipe.

 

The recipe for orange cherry bread muffin cupcake

 

 

Item	Ingredients		Percentage	Weight		Weight
			(%)	(g)		oz.
Sponge
1	Bread Flour		100	300		10.56
2	Instant Dry Yeast		1	3		0.11
3	Sugar		10	30		1.06
4	Sunkist		10	30		1.06
5	Water, Cold		100	300		10.56
After 4 hour fermentation
Additives
6	Salt		2	6		0.21
7	Milk powder		5	15		0.53
8	Wheat Germ		4	12		0.42
9	Dried Cherries		50	150		5.28
10	Sesame seeds		2	6		0.21
11	Butter		20	60		2.11

 

 

Photos of the orange cherry bread muffin cupcake process

 

 

Can you see the orange spots which are the Sunkist Orange Concentrate?

 

 

Quite a little that is ready for the 4 hour fermentation.

 

 

After 4 hours you can see the pockets of gases and the sponge has risen quite a bit.

 

 

Make sure you have diced up the cherries. These were the preserved in sugar cherries.

 

 

Fold in all the additives.

 

 

And place in cupcake tray for proofing about 30 to 45 minutes. Then bake. Oops I forgot how long I baked them for. I think 25 minutes and that may have been too long. Actually, I kept sticking a knife into the cup cake to see if it was cooked and I forgot to record the time.

 

 

This is the baked Orange Cherry Bread Muffin Cupcakes. Next time do make sure every cupcake has some cherry sticking out of the top.

It could have had a little more ‘orangey’ taste so I adjusted the ingredients in the next version.

Recipe 20110414

 

Item	Ingredients		Percentage	Weight		Weight
			(%)	(g)		oz.
Sponge
1	Bread Flour		100	400		14.08
2	Instant Dry Yeast		1	4		0.14
3	Sugar		10	40		1.41
4	Sunkist		15	60		2.11
5	Water, Cold		100	400		14.08
After 4 hour fermentation
Additives
6	Salt		2	8		0.28
7	Milk powder		5	20		0.70
8	Wheat Germ		4	16		0.56
9	Dried Cherries		50	200		7.04
10	Sesame seeds		2	8		0.28
11	Butter		20	80		2.82

 

 

You can observe that the sponge is more orange than the previous recipe (when the camera flash triggered)

 

 

I didn’t tell you that I sprinkled a liberal dose of sesame seeds, this time around, before baking to make it more appetising to look at. I changed the greasing of the baking tin from butter to palm oil and dropped the bake temperature to 180’C (356’F) on the next batch (I made 45 of those Orange Cherry Bread Muffin Cupcakes) so that the surface in contact with the tray would not burn.

I did find out that the preservatives in the Sunkist did not harm the yeast. You could put fewer cherries if you think it is expensive and you could enhance the orange flavour by increasing the amount of orange concentrate.

It was not too bad … actually my friend liked the first batch very much. I hadn’t given her the second batch. The second recipe just about makes 12 cupcakes. Give them plenty of time to rise – half an hour or more.

Another day I will tell about that Chilli Bread episode.

 

 

This article on orange cherry bread muffin cupcake was researched and written by Peter Achutha