Rabbit rabbit rabbit rabbit....

Happy Easter 2011 offering from Magog Muffins is lemon & poppyseed - light and lemony like the Spring. The eggs we use are from Gog Magog Hills Farm Shop - huge, free-range woodland creations that challenge the carrying capacity of a standard egg box.

Also with a spring in her step today is the Easter Bunny - but all out of chocolate having spread it around a bit. What's with all these eggs and rabbits and why Easter? The link seems to be in the time of year... the emergence of Spring in Europe. Eggs and rabbits are both symbols of fertility - check out rabbits and "superfetation". The tradition of coloured eggs left by a "spring hare" emerged in Germany in the 1500s, moving with German immigrants into the US in the 1700s.

This is of course their year - the Chinese Year of the Metal Rabbit which has a special significance for the head chef at Magog Muffins. Anyone coming across this metal rabbit is welcome to steer it in this direction - any metal egg will do... gold, silver, anything really.

Muffins in Manhattan

No resting on laurels at Magog Muffins. "Around the world in 80 muffins" is the story of our quest for perfection beyond the boundaries of Cambridgeshire and into competitor territory. "Spying" if you will. First, we take Manhattan.....













.... and the breakfast tray at the Harvard Club of New York left us speechless. A fresh plate of perfect fruit and a newly-baked blueberry muffin that awakened all the right taste buds. Pity about the coffee - never good out of metal - but the muffin scored on all counts:

Looks 4/5 Classic, simple, elegant. Topping 4/5 Unadorned but lightly crisp. Texture 4/5 Warm, crumbly but intact Taste 5/5 No artifice here. Plenty of fresh blueberries too Aftertaste 5/5. None - did they even use raising agent?












Of course we had to snoop further - and the fruity carrot version was a triumph - just look at this texture. Fresh-baked in the club kitchens every morning so it must be chef Angelo Ljubicic to whom the accolade belongs. Sadly we couldn't find him to check out the palm oil credentials but if he'd like to reassure us the address is MagogMuffins@gmail.com. For now these Harvard Club muffins are a contender for "Ms Muffin World". Onward into the Big Apple ....