ABC: Panettone Muffins

Happy New Year everyone! I hope 2012 was a good year for you and may 2013 be even better!

For this year, I've decided to join a baking club: ABC. It stands for Avid Baker's Challenge. ABC is ran by my friend Hanaa and it's a group that baked once a month. I knew Hanaa from my time as Heavenly Cake Bakers (HCB), baking through Rose's Heavenly Cakes. After that baking club ended in 2011, Hanaa asked me to join ABC but at that time I wasn't ready. Having baked through a whole book of 95 recipes in 2 years, I wanted a little break from baking and blogging. But I'm ready now and a couple of months ago I asked Hanaa to join ABC for 2013. For 2013, the group voted to bake from the 3 choices that Hanaa presented us: Flour by Joanne Chang, King Arthur Flour website, or Baking Illustrated by America's Test Kitchen. King Arthur Flour won.

For January, we are baking Panettone Muffins. I love pannetone so I was pretty excited about it. However, this recipe does make 12 muffins and having baked a couple other sweet things during this weekend, I thought I would just bake part of the recipe. So I split the recipe by 4. Yes 4! Hanaa and other ex-HCB friends are familiar with my habit with MO, as they've called it. I've had great success in the past making small portions of recipes and with this one as well.

I have a jar of dried fruit mix at home. I think it's a combo of raisins, cranberries, pineapple, papaya, and I don't know what else. They are a few months old and have been forgotten, sitting sadly somewhere in the deep pantry. I thought this would be a good opportunity to make sure they don't go to waste. I mix them with rum and it's amazing how they come to live after heating it up and leaving it at room temperature for an hour.

Since this is 1/4 of the recipe, there was no need to crank up the big mixer. And as it is, it was hard to mix this with the hand mixer. I am mixing 14.25 grams of butter with 32.75 grams of sugar. That sounds pretty crazy and small.

This recipe calls for 2 eggs, which is 1/2 egg now that it's 1/4 recipe. I do have leftover 1/2 egg from my tart lol.

Ready to add the milk and dry ingredients.

The nice thing about making such a small quantity is that it's easy to add and mix dry and wet ingredients. I can do it all by hand quickly.

Add in the macerated drunk fruits.

Okay so 1 recipe makes 12 muffin, divide by 4 yield 3 muffins and there's 4 here. Well, I didn't believe the recipe that said to fill the cups quite full. Quite full is so vague. And yes I have been so spoiled by Rose Levy Beranbaum's instructions for her recipes, where she would not really say "quite full" but would say "3/4 full" or even specify grams. Okay enough rant.

Anyway, I thought also since there s baking powder in play, the batter will rise, so I better leave some room. Those are the arguments in my head at least :). So I fill 3 cups with 60 grams of batter. The last cup was a bit short, by about 6 grams.

And they came out fine. A tad bit short, but it's okay for my portion control.

The pink candles are not very New Year, but it is my birthday this week and I did find those pink candles in the pantry somewhere.


Taste
They taste good. A tad dry. I think I overbake by a couple of minutes. I find that I much prefer them in bread form, less crust, more soft interior. I usually like crusts but not for panettone I guess. But I do like them for their easiness and individual portions. Plus, they look so cute in their pink wrappers, I think.

To join ABC or read more about it, please head over to ABC main blog. For this Panettone recipe, please head over to KAF website.