The Best Sourdough Discard Curry Cheese Muffins

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These Curry Cheese Sourdough Discard Muffins are a crowd favourite and easy enough to make often. They use up a generous portion of sourdough discard, which is great for feeding your starter. Prepare the batter the night before, for extra fermentation, or simply whip up just before lunch. Everyone will love these cheesy, savoury snacks!

Ingredients in Sourdough Discard Curry Cheese Muffins:

Dry Ingredients:

• Curry Powder – 1 teaspoon of mild (or hot, if you’re feeling courageous) is all you need to enhance the cheesy flavour and boost the savoury profile of these muffins. Curry and cheese is a match made in heaven. You might just become addicted to pairing the two!
• Flour – I use high grade flour, which is usually for making breads. It worked perfectly well, but you may want to use all purpose or cake flour, if you have it lying around.
• Cheese – this muffin recipe has no oil or butter, so the cheese in this recipe provides the fat component. I like to use a generous amount of cheese for extra savoury-ness and a better texture.
• Baking Powder – omit the Baking powder when mixing the batter if you are wanting to ferment these muffins to make them easier to digest. Simply add the required amount just before baking.
• Sugar – 2 tablespoons of sugar does not make the mixture taste sweet at all, but will balance the flavour in the muffins.
• Salt – 1 teaspoon will enhance the muffins and prevent them from tasting bland.

Wet Ingredients

• Sourdough Discard – this is a large mixture (it makes about 20 large muffins), and uses a generous 1 cup of sourdough discard. This is great if your sourdough starter is a bit sluggish and needs a decent feeding. The more you remove from your starter, the better it will respond when fed.
• Milk – this recipe definitely isn’t vegan! Use either lite or full cream.
• Eggs – just 2 large eggs is all that is needed to enrich this vast batter.

Do you need to Ferment the Batter?

No, you definitely do not need to ferment these muffins, and I have not bothered to do so. Just quickly measure, mix and bake – these muffins can be ready to eat in just 30 minutes. It’s a great option if you have guests coming or hordes of children to feed, and you want something homemade to feed them.

Of course, if you are conscious about eating un-fermented white flour, this recipe can be rested for a minimum of 7 hours to help break down the anti-nutrients. Because of the sourdough discard, the flour will submit and conform. Simply make the batter the night before (omitting the baking powder), cover and rest. In the morning, all you need to do is preheat the oven, add the baking powder, spoon into the muffin tray, and bake. Easy!

How to make Sourdough Discard Curry Cheese Muffins:

As I said earlier, these Sourdough Discard Curry Cheese Muffins are super easy to make.

If you are not fermenting the batter, you need to start by preheating the oven to 210 degrees Celsius. The mixture does not take very long to prepare, and you need to the oven to be hot so you can put the muffins in the oven as soon as the baking powder has dampened.

Next, you will need to sift the dry ingredients into a large bowl. Give this a bit of a stir with a fork to ensure the curry powder is evenly dispersed.

Grate the cheese and add this to the flour mixture. The dry ingredients will coat and separate the grated cheese and ensure it spreads evenly throughout the batter.

Mix together the wet ingredients. Make sure the milk, sourdough discard and eggs are fully combined before adding to the dry ingredients. This is to prevent over-mixing later.

Make a well in the cheesy flour mix, and pour the wet ingredients in. Carefully fold, until all the flour is dampened but not over-mixed.

Optional topping: sprinkle with a little extra cheese and paprika or chili powder.

Spoon into the muffin tray and bung into the piping hot oven. Bake for 10 – 12 minutes or until the muffin bounces back when gently pressed.

Enjoy warm with lashings of butter and your favourite chutney!

Sourdough Discard Curry Cheese Muffins Tips and Tricks:

Sifting the dry ingredients really does make a difference to the final muffin. To make these Sourdough Curry Cheese Muffins light and airy, taking the time to sift will give you the best results. If you don’t have a sieve, whisking the dry ingredients in the bowl with a dry whisk or fork will help a lot.

For muffins, it is best to mix the dry ingredients separately from wet ingredients. Once these separate mixtures have been thoroughly combined, you then add the liquid to the dry. This is to help you to fold them together with as little mixing as possible. An over-worked muffin batter will lose air and become tough and unpleasant.

On this line, try to handle the mixture as little as possible. When spooning into muffin trays, let the mixture mound naturally – avoid smoothing or interfering with it’s surface. We want to retain the air so the muffins are light and fluffy.

The muffins are ready when the centre springs back when pressed. If this is hard to gauge, use a skewer. Push it into the centre of the muffin. If it comes out clean, the muffins are ready. If not, then keep your eye on them. There should only be a couple of minutes between slightly under-baked till ready.

Save your sanity and use paper or re-usable muffin tray liners. There is nothing worse than greasing muffin trays, not to mention getting them out after baking! Muffin tray liners help to make the whole baking (and cleaning!) process quick and easy.

Serving and Storage for these Sourdough Discard Curry Cheese Muffins:

These Sourdough Curry Cheese Muffins are best served warm, soon after baking. Muffins can decline quite rapidly after 24 hours, so I would recommend freezing and then heating in a microwave as and when you are craving this savoury snack!

These muffins would make a great party food snack. Instead of regular-sized muffin pans, use a mini muffin tray to make dinky, bite-sized canapes that everyone will love! Elevate them with a bit of cream cheese and ham on top – delicious!

They will keep in the freezer for months, in an airtight container for up to four days.