The most magical day of the year has finally arrived. So why not start pampering yourself right from the morning, whilst waiting for Christmas lunch to begin? A delicious Christmas muffin, an American recipe that is now part of Italian breakfasts, perhaps accompanied by a steaming cup of tea and a cheerful Christmas song in the background.
Christmas muffins: recipe
Similar to plum cake, muffins are typical cakes with a round shape and a semicircular top. Normally they are not coated, but for a special occasion like Christmas you can make an exception. For the filling, you can choose from numerous ingredients and it’s practically impossible to not find the right one for you. Want some examples? Chocolate, blueberries, raspberries, cinnamon, banana, strawberry, carrots, or orange. To avoid making it too heavy for breakfast, also in view of Christmas lunch which will inevitably end with pandoro, panettone and other desserts, you can opt for a version inspired by an Italian evergreen: Torta Margherita.
In a bowl mix 2 eggs and 6 egg yolks with a pinch of salt and ⅔ cup sugar. Begin to beat them with a whisk over a double boiler: whip for about 5 minutes, until the eggs reach a temperature of about 98 °F. Continue to whip them off the double boiler using an electric mixer, for about 10-15 minutes. You should obtain a frothy and smooth mixture that you can "write" in: if you pick up the beater and let the batter fall, it can be clearly seen on the surface. Add some grated lemon rind and a sachet of vanillin. Add 7/8 cups of sifted flour and 1 ½ oz of wheat starch to the batter very carefully, making sure not to deflate it. Lastly, add ¼ cup of melted butter and stir. Put the dough in the small cups and bake them in a preheated oven at 180° for about 25 minutes.
Keyword for decoration: have fun
Once the muffins have cooled down, they can be decorated. Let your imagination run wild here and have fun decorating them with your favorite Christmas decorations, recreating the symbols of Christmas on top of the muffins. You can use white or colored icing, cream, melted chocolate or even sugar paste to create three-dimensional objects. In this way, simple muffins can become cute little Christmas trees in a few moves. Just whip the cream, color it green, put it in a sac à poche and cover the muffins recreating the shape of the tree. Finally, sprinkle the cupcakes with rainbow sprinkles. And why not make the muffin into a sweet cadeau to bite into? Coat it with white icing sugar and again with the same frosting, but red, make a red bow on top of the candy. Another idea to make children happy could be to recreate the face of Santa Claus: it requires some extra effort, but we’re sure you can do it. Or you can prepare some snowflakes with royal icing.
Reindeer muffins
Super charming and funny are Santa's reindeer-shaped muffins, which will win over young and old alike. So, we need chocolate muffins and to decorate amaretti biscuits, round white sugared almonds, salted pretzels, and red smarties. Cover the muffins with melted chocolate, apply an amaretto in the center for the snout, to form the eyes put two sugared almonds and for the ears two salted pretzels on the sides. Finally, place a smartie on the amaretto making it stick with a little melted chocolate that will also be used to make the eye pupils.
