Cheese and Onion Muffins

These muffins had a rather sinister beginning.

They actually started life as a cruel and malicious ploy to trick my friend.

But let me explain, it's not quite as bad as all that.

You see, this friend doesn't like cake. She has an aversion to it, refuses to eat it. That's all very well, people are entitled to their opinions (even if they are wrong).

But because of this, she also has an aversion to muffins. This is where I disapprove, because as I talked about in the original muffin post, muffins are not cakes!

I tried to convince her. I tried to explain, I tried to use science and maths to show her the difference, to show her that really, muffins are closer to bread than cake. But she didn't listen to reason. She refused to accept the evidence I put before her. I knew there was only one way I could teach her.

I had to find a way to remove her prejudices, to let her experience muffins without the assumption that she was going to be eating cake, and then she would understand.

So all I did was, neglect to tell her that what I made were technically muffins. I just told her they were quick bread, soda bread, the kind risen with  baking powder instead of yeast. It's certainly not false, just a bit of a white lie.

Anyway, I hoped these muffins would be a good one to start her off on, because the fact they're savoury takes away some more of the cake connotations.

The fact they're delicious also helps, I suspect.

And do you know, it worked! When I gave them to her, she did mutter "These look suspiciously like muffins", and I think she almost knew she was being fooled, but that doesn't matter. The point is, she ate them, and loved them, and so I win. Well actually I guess everyone wins, because she liked eating them too.

So, the actual muffins.

• I made them according to the general muffin ratio, based on 200g of flour. So 200g of milk, 100g of eggs, 100g of butter. And not forgetting 2tsp of baking powder.
• The additions were simple. First I added 100g of grated cheese. For any kind of muffins, I'd recommend using additions of the same weight as you would use sugar (i.e., the same weight as the butter and eggs). I put about three-quarters of the cheese into the batter, and kept the last bit for sprinkling on top to give them a nice cheesy crust, although that of course is optional.
• Then I fried one onion until it was nicely browned. If you prefer it less cooked, you could just fry it a little bit, or even add it into the batter raw. It would be softened up by the time the muffins were cooked, but would probably add a bit more bite (and stronger flavour). I also added a couple of cloves of garlic, because when has extra garlic ever been a bad thing? It just so happens that the onion weighed almost exactly 100g, which is exactly how much I wanted it to weigh. 

That's everything. Super-easy, super-tasty snack muffins. Easy to make, easy to store (no need to refrigerate) and most definitely easy to eat.