Coffee Kaya Muffins

It was very nice of my friend, who also loves baking, to lend me one of her muffin cookbooks. I wanted to try out this jam-filled muffins, but realised that I didn't have any yogurt in the fridge. In the end, I used a recipe from another cookbook, which is quite similar and I have all the ingredients on hand. The original recipe is called the strawberry cheesecake muffins. Instead of using strawberries and cream cheese, I used kaya spread (a sweet spread, made from coconut milk, egg, sugar, and pandan leaves) for the filling. As I only have a coffee flavoured milk in my fridge, I turned the recipe to coffee kaya muffins.

I made two versions of the muffins. One with kaya filling, the other with some chocolate chips. I used 2 different paper liners to help differentiate the two. To my amazing, despite baking them at the same time, with the same batter, the effect was totally different! The chocolate chips muffins in the cupcake liners almost "exploded", while the kaya ones looked rather flat.

When I first looked at this muffin, it reminded me of souffles...something which I would want to try out someday...

With my mix-and-match recipe, the muffins turn out to be very moist and fluffy. The muffin is not sweet, but the sweetness from the kaya and chocolate chips balanced off the taste just nice. My niece who came to visit us liked the muffins very much. I gave her a few to bring home for breakfast tomorrow. She told me she likes my almond biscuits, but she would rather eat them plain, i.e., without the almonds!

Ingredients:
(make 12 muffins)

350g plain flour
1 1/2 tablespoon baking powder
115g caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
250ml milk (I used Meiji's coffee flavoured milk)
85g butter, melted
kaya jam
a handful of chocolate chips

Method:

1. Preheat Oven to 200 degC. Line a muffin pan with 12 paper liners.
2. Sift flour and baking powder into a large bowl, then stir in sugar and salt. Mix well.
3. Beat the eggs and milk together in a bowl. Stir in butter. Mix well.
4. Stir in the egg mixture to the dry ingredients, gently mix to form a loose, slightly lumpy batter. Do not overmix.
5. Spoon batter into 6 muffin cups, filling half full. Add 1 teaspoon of kaya to each, top with remaining batter.
6. Add a handful of chocolate chips to the remaining batter. Stirring only once or twice. Do not overmix, otherwise the muffins will be tough. Fill the remaining muffin cups till 2/3 full.
7. Bake for 15 mins until well risen and golden on top. Remove from the tin and allow to cool completely on a wire rack.