littletree bakes...mini victoria sponge muffins

A merry Monday to all! Have you all had nice weekends? There has been a bit of a baking/cooking bonanza in my house over the weekend and this little muffin recipe was just one of them...there has also been soup making and chutney being concocted ready for Christmas, but to name a few! I thought of the idea for these muffins after watching the final of the BBC programme The Great British Bake Off, where the eventual winner, made mini victoria sponges. I thought 'I could do that!' but make it slightly simpler by baking a plain vanilla muffin and just cutting it in half to fill with jam and buttercream...and so the mini victoria sponge muffin was created! They were very tasty with a nice cuppa on a rather chilly Sunday afternoon...

Ingredients
Dry
9oz Self Raising Flour
4oz Caster Sugar
1tsp Baking Powder
Pinch of Salt
Wet
3 fluid oz Vegetable oil or 3oz melted Butter
8 fluid oz Milk
1 Egg
Splash of Vanilla Essence
Filling
Jam
Icing Sugar and Softened butter to make Buttercream

Method
1.  Preheat oven to 200c/400f, thouroughly grease a 12 hole mufin tin.
2. Measure and combine all the Dry ingredients into a large bowl, set aside
3. In a jug measure in oil, milk, egg and vanilla essence, whisk. (This may look a bit odd as the oil seperates from the other ingredients, but makes no difference when aded to the dry ingredients.)
4. Pour all the Wet into the Dry ingredients and stir just to combine, it will look lumpy but no flour should be visible, over mixing makes a heavy muffin!
5. Pop in the oven and bake for 20-25mins or until golden brown. Remove and leave to cool slightly in the tin.
6. Turn the tin up-side down to remove muffins, some may need a jiggle or a knife running around the edges before they will come out, place on a cooling rack.
7. Wait unitl the muffins are cold before cutting them in half and adding the jam and buttercream, sandwich back together and dust with icing sugar.

Enjoy! x