Meet our hero today: magdalena.

A magdalena is a cupcake, without frosting. Or a muffin if you prefer. But it is not made with butter, but oil. The classical shape of a magdalena is a mountain, which is called “copete”.

We will be making five different versions with our magdalena recipe: classic magdalenas, magdalena in a mug, chocolate chip magdalenas, dark cacao magdalenas, and dark cacao magdalenas with milk chocolate liners.

Let’s start with the basic one.

classic magdalenas recipe

Ingredients (for 12 cupcakes)

• 2 medium eggs
• 135 g sugar
• 85 g all-purpose flour
• 85 g evaporated milk
• 85 g light olive oil or sunflower oil
• 6 g baking powder
• Pinch of salt
• Lemon zest

Let’s go!

In a large bowl whisk together the eggs, lemon zest, salt, and sugar.

Add the evaporated milk and whisk.

Add the oil and whisk again.

Add the flour and baking powder. Mix well.

A spatula will be helpful. This is a runny batter; it’s not dense.

In a cupcake pan, place liners.

And fill them with the batter (2/3 of their capacity). I use a soup ladle for doing it.

Now we are going to sprinkle these with sugar.

Lightly…

And we are going to stick the tray in the fridge for 30 minutes. The combination of rest and cold temperature will make the batter rise and form the mountain at the top of our magdalenas.

We are going to preheat the oven to 200ºC (392º F) and bake them for around 15-20 minutes. Each oven is different. But you should see something like this:

And the result we’ll get is amazing! Perfect magdalenas that are way better than store-bought and very easy to make.

Beautiful!

How’s the crumb?

It’s a soft crumb and it smells slightly like lemon. These are not oily or very moist and they are perfect for serving with coffee.

magdalena microwave mug

I was wondering if it was possible to use this batter for a microwave mug cake… and it turns out that not only it’s possible, but it is delicious.

Choose a tall mug (this is my 15 oz poppy mug) and add a small amount of magdalena batter.

Then choose your addons. I have Lacasitos (Spanish M&M’s) and chopped pecans.

Mix them into the batter and microwave them on high for 1 minute or so.

Let it cool! It’s way better when cool:

It’s a nice crumb with small holes!

And it tastes totally like a magdalena.

Here’s another version… in a ramekin…

I added very little batter and some Maltesers.

If we microwave it for 45 seconds and let it cool we get this marvelous crumb!

 

chocolate chip magdalenas

Easy, super easy. It’s the same initial batter but I replaced the lemon zest with vanilla extract and I added milk chocolate chips.

Worth a try!

cocoa magdalenas or magdalenas de chOcolate

Easy again: starting with the original batter, I replaced

• the lemon zest with vanilla extract, and
• 1 tablespoon flour with 1 tablespoon cocoa powder.

cocoa magdalenas with chocolate liners

Ok, these technically aren’t magdalena-shaped but… I couldn’t resist. I filled a mini loaf cake pan with the cocoa batter…

And after they were cooled down, I dipped their bottoms in tempered milk chocolate:

Once the chocolate sets, it’s crunchy!

That’s all for today… now go make some magdalenas and travel to Spain without leaving the home. Also, take a look at my new section, for foodies.

 

Questions? comments? Suggestions for other Spanish recipes? I’m right here!