Surprise in the middle muffins - Apple & salted caramel and Banana & rich chocolate

Then there was one last remaining apple on the tree. The others had ended up as crumbles, purees and I even attempted a tarte tatin. So what to do with the last apple?

I had received a lovely box of goodies from Dr Oetker a few weeks ago from their #evenbetterbaking twitter competition and I knew I had to put the items to good use before 9 year old D, aka The Brilliant Chef, got his hands on them.

I was particularly keen on trying out the Dr Oetker 'Surprise Inside' cupcake centres. I had a salted caramel and a rich chocolate flavour to try.

So I decided to make Apple muffins with a salted caramel centre, and Chocolate Banana muffins with the rich chocolate centre.

Apple & Salted Caramel Muffins
For the apple muffins, I started with this recipe from BBC Good Food for Apple Caramel Crumble muffins and then tweaked it by replacing half the flour with wholemeal and reducing the amount of sugar in it. I didn't do the caramel filling when cooking or the crumble topping either but instead used the 'Surprise inside' filling.

So my ingredients list looked like this:
150g wholemeal flour
150g plain flour
1 tbsp baking powder
150g caster sugar
100g stork (warmed slightly to soften more)
210ml milk
1 large egg
1 apple (around 200g) chopped into small cubes

Then it was a case of combining the dry ingredients in one bowl. The wet ingredients in another bowl. Then combining the two and adding in the apple.

These were cooked in a preheated oven at 180C for 20-15 minutes

Banana & Chocolate Muffins
For the banana and chocolate muffins, I used this Nigella recipe without any tweaks.

Then I filled with the rich chocolate 'surprise inside' filling once they were cooked and cooling down. The banana muffins were topped with a piece of dried banana and the apple muffins had a Dr Oetker wafer flower on top.

I'm really pleased with how both types of muffin turned out. We all especially loved the apple ones - hence the blogpost to remind me of the recipe I used so I don't forget the next time I want to make them.