IMBB13: Lime, white chocolate and coconut muffins

Wow. I can't believe I finally got my act together and made it to an IMBB finishing line. And before deadline too. Woohoo.

What is IMBB? It stands for Is My Blog Burning and is basically an online simultaneous theme-based cook-off. This month's IMBB theme was My Little Cupcake (or muffin). Yay, I recall was my response. Not too intimidating for this lazy chef.

A couple of days were spent recipe browsing, and er... wiping the resultant drool off the pages. I needed something I would be inspired to bake, and of course eat. But I confess I'm not a huge chocolate cake fan--I like light and tangy. Like lime. With say, white chocolate. And yes yes yes, coconut! Eureka!

I used Delia's basic American muffin recipe from her Summer Collection and then added my own quantities of lime, white chocolate and coconut. In another twist I also decided to segment the lime and use the lime pearls for maximum flavour and extra texture. I wasn't sure if this would work but hey, what are IMBBs for?

Lime, white chocolate and coconut muffins

150g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 medium egg
40g caster sugar
110ml milk
50g butter, melted and cooled slightly
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 lime
80g white chocolate chopped roughly
1/2 cup dessicated coconut

Grate the zest of the lime and set aside.
Cut the outer pith from the lime and then carefully slide the knife under one membrane and gently remove a segment of lime flesh.
Continue until all lime flesh has been extracted into a bowl for later use.
NB. This isn't as hard as it sounds as the lime membranes are quite fibrous. Alternatively you could just squeeze the limes and use the juice.

Now sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a large bowl.
In a separate large mixing bowl, mix together the egg, sugar, milk, butter and vanilla.
Return the dry ingredients to the sifter and sift again over the egg mixture (Delia says this double sifting is essential, and hey, Delia always knows best!).
Quickly fold the flour into the egg mixture, taking no more than 15 seconds, as over-mixing will prevent them rising.

Add the lime zest, lime flesh, white chocolate and coconut (or whatever variation you prefer), combining with minimum stirring.

Spoon into muffin trays and bake at 200C on a high shelf. Large muffins should take 30 minutes, smaller mini-muffins only about 20 minutes.

Makes 6 large muffins or 20 mini-muffins.

The verdict:

The pearls of lime flesh add a great burst of tanginess and give it a good pineapple-cake-like moistness. It's been suggested to me that maybe a more intense flavour could be achieved by infusing the milk with the lime curd and then cooling--this would make the rind strips a little softer as well as enabling a more even distribution of lime flavour.

The coconut flavour wasn't very strong so next time perhaps I'd either add more coconut, use coconut milk powder or even better, maybe a dash of Malibu!

Best part? Definitely the white chocolate surprise mouthfuls!

Overall these aren't very sweet at all, which is good as it means you can eat more (especially if you're searching for white chocolate treasures).

For a little more decadence I would definitely ice these by combining icing sugar with lime juice/pearls and adding a couple of lime zest tendrils and white chocolate shavings for extra wow factor.

But excuse me--I've got some treasure-hunting to do...

Check out all the entries in the monthly wrap-up by this month's host Maki at I was really just very hungry (coming soon).

The deadline for IMBB13: My Little Cupcake (or muffin) is this Thursday 24 March. Come on... there's muffin to it!