Nigella Eats Everything

I want to introduce you to some new friends of mine. We haven’t known each other long but we’ve had a few short, intense moments in the last week. These friends are known as duffins, or in other words, jam doughnut muffins, and I like to think these will be friends for life.

As with many good friends, you’re unwilling to share them amongst your various social groups. They are yours and yours alone. You become unfairly possessive over them – what if they like your friends more than they like you? Could you bear the rejection? But with jam doughnut muffins, these little guys can’t help but please everyone they meet, and they bolster you up as your friends are so impressed by the tender crumb, the sugary crunch, and the sticky jammy surprise in the centre. You end up getting the credit for the duffins’ hard work.

So, what is a jam doughnut muffin?

A duffin is all in the name; it is a cross between a muffin and a doughnut. I’m not sure if it rolls off the tongue – is moughnut any better though? – so any contributions for a new name will be greatly appreciated. Unlike a doughnut, the recipe is absurdly simple; it’s a doughnut made in a muffin tin, and the recipe is so easy that there will be less doughnuts around once the duffin goes global. It’s survival of the fittest at the end of the day.

Instead of the satisfactory tear as you take a bite, and the classic doughnut chew, jam doughnut muffins are noticeably softer, more cakey, and melt in the mouth with astonishing ease. Rather than a dough it is a smooth and sloppy batter than you dole into a greased muffin tray. They are an express doughnut to satisfy your doughnut cravings in a mere half an hour. Once baked and golden you pop them out of the tray into a bed of cinnamon-scented sugar and playfully roll them around until crusted all over and sparkling.

Different recipes vary on the all-important addition of jam. Martha Collison suggests carving out a hole in the baked duffin, much like with doughnuts, and piping jam into its centre, while Sarah Cook from BBC Good Food instructs you to add it prior to baking, and layering the gem-coloured blobs with spoonfuls of batter. Having tried both, I found Martha’s method, although producing perfectly perky duffins, did not hold enough jam, leaving me feeling deprived.

Sarah’s duffins took slightly longer to cook and were larger, not that this is a bad thing, and the sheer quantity of jam inside was enough to convince me of my favoured recipe. It’s been fun – for me at least – to devour a pick ‘n’ mix selection of duffins full of varying jam flavours, never knowing which flavour I’ll have today, and then I tried them with peanut butter and jam, and I think my childhood has converged into one delicious cakey morsel.

The doughnut muffin is here to stay and I look forward to a long and happy relationship. The only downside is finding sugary residue all over the kitchen, but in terms of friendships, that is hardly a negative.