So this is where my Scandi roots really show.. Liquorice is having a major moment in my native Finland with famous chefs creating exciting new flavours and production being more artisan and small scale.
I have been brought up to love all things liquorice and we even take a step further to add salt to it to make something called “salmiakki”. Generally when I introduce any of my English friends to the salty variety it doesn’t seem to impress them.. I guess you have to get the taste for it from young age! These muffins however are not salty, but chocolatey and sweet with a hint of liquorice that you can add to your taste.
They are actually best served the following day as the flavours have more time to develop so perfect if you have people coming over and don’t want to spend the day in the kitchen!
Ingredients
Makes around 10-12 muffins
Muffins
75 ml dark cacao powder
175g soft butter
125 ml sugar
2 tsp vanilla sugar
2 tsp liquorice powder
2 eggs
350 ml flour
½ ts bicarbonate soda
100 ml milk
3 bars of Panda liquorice
Icing
200g soft butter
50 ml coffee
200 ml icing sugar
2 tsp vanilla sugar
2 tsp liquorice powder
3 tbsp dark cocoa powder
1 bar of Panda liquorice for decorating
Method
Sieve the cocoa powder to a bowl. Mix flour, bicarbonate soda, vanilla sugar and liquorice powder in a another bowl. Whisk sugar and soft butter until fluffy. Give this some vigour as it really makes a difference with the overall texture. Mix in the eggs while still whisking.
Pour the milk into the cocoa powder and mix until smooth. Fold in the flour mixture and cocoa-milk mixture in to your fluffy butter/sugar/egg combo.
Add the mixture into your muffin cases about ½ full or so. Then sprinkle in your chopped up liquorice bits.
Then add a little more mixture to cover them. Your cases should be about ¾ full.
Bake in the oven in 175c (350F) degrees for around 20 minutes. Check with a cocktail pick in the middle if they are done. If they are, then there should be no mixture on your pick. Once out of the oven give them some time to cool down completely on a wire rack.
In the meantime you can prepare the icing. The instructions are mega easy – put all ingredients into a bowl and whisk until smooth. Now here the hard part is to whisk like your life depends on it! I had a little panic concern first as my icing was looking mega lumpy and I thought we would have to eat these beauties without icing.. But I kept at it and ta-dah! Silky smooth icing!
Put the icing into a fanciful icing bag with a nozzle or just a freezer bag with a corner cut off. My skills are fairly limited here so I just went round starting from outside towards middle trying to cover the entire muffin.
Sprinkle a few chopped up bits of liquorice on top to let everyone know what lies within. It’s chocolatey, fluffy, liquorice with a hint of coffee on the icing. Best served the next day – if you can wait that long!
I have taken inspiration from this blog, but have changed a few things. 🙂
House of Harlow 