couple of questions about making a muffin (first time)
whet it comes to muffin recipes, you can just easily google it or search it on youtube and you'll get hundreds of results. but since i'm a first timer, i dont know which recipe has too much unnecessary ingredient/ too little ingredient or unnecessarily too complicated with the flavor or too bland...I just want something normal/basic but still tasty and not too bland..
after a couple of searching, here's the recipe that I choose to follow:
Basic Yogurt Muffin [1]
*2 cups AP flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup of plain or flavoured yogurt thinned with a little water to make it runny
1/4 cups of Canola Oil
1 large egg
1 cup of (any flavoring you want to add...chopped blueberries/strawberries/chocolate/cheese)
Other ingredient that most people seem to add as well:
milk
baking soda
1 tsp of vanilla extract (optional)
now my questions are:
-what is the role of each of these ingredients? (you dont necessarily explain it in a detailed manner..it can be as simple like this: sugar = makes the muffin sweeter. more sugar means sweeter/ less sugar means less sweetness and more on the flavoring fruits)
-some people uses soda AND baking powder, why is that? arent they both the same? (atleast their uses i think)
here's a recipe sample that uses both :
1. Gemma Stafford's Muffin - Written Recipe [2] / Video Tutorial [3]
Basic Muffin Recipe (video) [4]
is it necessary to use both or can I just use baking powder?
-some also uses milk along with yogurt, why?
-should I follow the above recipe or do you recommend adding something else?
now the reason i'm asking these is because:
1. I dont want to buy and waste too much unnecessary ingredient that I barely use (like baking soda...I barely use my baking powder already)
2. I wanna do it correctly
3. I also want to use some of the ingredients that I barely use so they dont go to waste lol ( to be more specific, yogurt and baking powder...I used them previously to create Choc Lava cake)
4. and I wanna know which ingredient should I adjust to achieve a certain flavor or texture.
anyway thats all...sorry if there's too much to read, I just wanna make sure i'm doing things correctly....
thank you