Showing posts with label muffins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label muffins. Show all posts
Normally I would be sharing a lovely iced and baked cake with you today, as it is my birthday. I ususally make myself my Raspberry Celebration Cake every year. It is my all time favourite birthday cake to make. However Photo Bucket is still holding my photos hostage over there and I can't seem to be able to get any answers from them. So this year on my Birthday you get Muffins. Triple Berry Muffins.
Fruit and Nut Muffins. Oh boy, are these fabulous muffins. Moist and delicious and filled with not one, not two, but three dried fruits. Chopped dates, raisins and chopped prunes!
Believe it or not, there is NO refined sugars in this recipe. In fact there is no sugar at all. All of the sweetness relies on those lovely dried fruits, and trust me when I say that they are just sweet enough.
In fact there is only 1/2 cup of butter in the whole recipe, which breaks down to 86 calories per muffin, so over all thats not too bad. Its less than a tablespoon per muffin.
Low fat, no sugar . . . and terrifically moist and delicious. There is nothing wrong with these!
You cook the fruit in a saucepan along with a cup of water to begin with, like making a date and nut loaf. It kind of melts down a bit, at least the dates to . . . into a sweet caramel-like mass. I put the butter right into that hot mixture and it melts down into it.
Once it cools to lukewarm, you can add it to the flour. The only leavening is baking soda. It starts to work as soon as you add the fruit and eggs, so work quickly then to get the batter in the pan ready to bake.
As you can see, they rose up beautifully . . .
They are loaded in natural fibre from the dates and the raisins and the prunes . . .
The toasted walnuts add a lovely crunch. I always toast my walnuts when I am baking with them. Its very easy to do. Just pop them onto a baking sheet and toast them into a hot oven (200*C/400*F) for about 8 to 10 minutes. You will be able to smell their nuttiness. Toasted nuts just taste better in my opinion. Its not necessary to toast them, but I always do.
Don't you love my little ruffled muffin cups. I got them from the Scandanavian Pantry. They are so cute!
I just adore anything Scandanavian . . . don't you?
If I could afford it I would kit my whole house out in Scandanavian style . . .
Back to the muffins, because they are low in sugar and fat, and high in fibre, you won't mind indulging yourself in a little bit of butter spreading . . .
Its not necessary mind you . . . but awfully nice all the same. 😁😁
Fruit & Nut Muffins
Yield: 10
prep time: 15 Mcook time: 20 Mtotal time: 35 M
These muffins are incredibly moist and delicious. Serve warm, split and spread with butter for an incredible taste treat! There is no sugar in these. They are sweetened by the dried fruit, and are filled with lovely flavours.
Ingredients:
- 150g chopped dates (1 cup)
- 75g chopped prunes (1/2 cup)
- 75g raisins (1/2 cup)
- 240ml water (1 cup)
- 120g butter (1/2 cup)
- 1/4 sp salt
- 140g flour (1 cup)
- 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
- 2 large free range eggs, whisked lightly
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 60g toasted chopped walnuts (1/2 cup)
Instructions:
- Place the dates, prunes and raisins in a saucepan with the water. Bring to the boil, then reduce to a slow simmer and cook for about 8 minutes until soft. Remove from the heat. Add the butter and allow it to melt.
- Preheat the oven to 180*C/350*F/ gas mark 4. Line 10 muffin cups with paper liners.
- Sift the flour, salt and soda into a bowl. Add the beaten eggs, vanilla and date mixture and mix all together just to combine. Fold in the walnuts.
- Divide the mixture between the muffin cups.
- Bake for 20 minutes, until well risen and a toothpick inserted in the centre of one comes out clean.
- Remove to a wire rack to cool somewhat before eating. These are gorgeous served warm and spread with butter.
- Store any leftovers in an airtight container.
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Thanks!
We are huge muffin lovers in this house. I usually try to bake a batch every weekend so that we have them to enjoy for a few days. Some weeks I small batch, not wanting to waste any. This weekend finding ourselves in possession of quite a few over-ripe bananas I decided to bake a full batch of Banana muffins, knowing that I can simply free what we will not eat within a couple of days to enjoy somewhere down the road.
Normally this wouldn't happen. But Todd went for a walk the other day and bought some bananas at a shop, not realising of course that I had bananas on my grocery order for delivery. Not a problem really as I always use them up.
Sometimes I will bake Banana Bread and I have some really great recipes for a variety of Banana Breads on here. My absolute favourite one is this Sour Cream Banana Loaf. This is the one I always bake for the Mr when I cooked at Brenchley Manor.
I had to make sure that there was always one of those in the larder. He loved it toasted in the toaster oven and spread with cold butter for breakfast. I do love Banana Bread, but in all truth I don't always want to wait the hour or so that it takes to bake.
If you are looking for instant gratification, Banana Muffins are the way to go. They mix together rather quickly and bake lickety split..
You can usually be enjoying one of them within a half an hour, start to finish, and this is my favourite recipe for them.
It is my favourite recipe for a number of reasons. One with the ease at which I can throw them together and two because they always bake up moist and delicious, never dry and always beautifully flavoured.
If you are a purist, you can of course leave out the chocolate chips and walnuts, but we love them just as they are! You can of course use pecans if you would rather. We like the walnuts.
I always toast my nuts before using them when baking. It doesn't take much effort. Just a few minutes on a baking tray in a hot oven does the trick. Toasting your nuts just helps them to taste nuttier!
It enhances the nuttiness as it were . . . and chocolate chips. Chocolate and banana are a beautiful conbination. Think chocolate dipped frozen bananas here. The two flavours are quite symbiotic.
I was thinking as well, if you love peanut butter and banana sandwiches, you might like to use peanut butter chips in these instead of chocolate? What say you eh?
In any case I think these are pretty perfect just as they are. Soft, buttery, lightly spiced and moist.
Quick to make, quick to bake, incredibly moreish when it comes to enjoying them. I could easily eat two of these in one sitting, but I restrain myself.
If you are looking for the perfect Banana Muffin, you can't go too far wrong by using this recipe. I think quite possibly, its the absolute best.
Banana Muffins
Yield: 12 muffins
These are the perfect banana muffins. Moist, lightly spiced and filled with toasted nuts and chocolate chips (or not if that's what you prefer.)
Ingredients:
- 210 grams plain flour (1 1/2 cups)
- 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
- 3 large over-ripe bananas (about 1 1/2 cups)
- 86g melted butter (6 TBS)
- 145g soft light brown sugar (2/3 cup)
- 1 large free range egg, lightly beaten
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 TBS whole milk
- 60g chopped toasted walnut meats (1/2 cup)
- 90g semi sweet chocolate chips (1/2 cup)
Instructions:
- Preheat the oven to 220*C/425*F/ gas mark 7. Line a 12 cup muffin tin with paper liners.
- Whisk together the flour, soda, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Stir in the chocolate chips and nuts.
- Using an electric whisk beat the bananas in a bowl until mashed thoroughly. Whisk in the sugar, egg, vanilla, melted butter and milk, combining well together. Add the dry ingredients all at once and stir together just to combine. Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin tin just to below the top of the paper liner.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 5 minutes then immediately lower the oven temperature to 180*C/350*F/ gas mark 4 without opening the oven door. Bake for a further 15 minutes until well risen, golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the centre of a muffin comes out clean.
- Allow to cool for five minutes, prior to carefully lifting out to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Store any leftovers in an airtight container for up to two days. These will also freeze well, properly wrapped, for up to three months. Thaw overnight prior to eating.
So what is it that makes a muffin the perfect muffin for you? What flavours do you enjoy? Next to Banana I love Bran. I need to find a way to combine the two don't you think?
I think Pizza is one of my all time favourite food groups, so when I saw a recipe for Pizza Muffins on the Donna Hay site a while back I put it on my "to bake" list! They really appealed to me, however I did not want twelve muffins, so I have small batched it!
The muffin now makes only six delicious, flavour-filled, cheesy muffins. I also adapted the recipe a tiny bit because . . . how could I not? I just have to fiddle with things. I can't help myself.
I will put my hand up at the start and let you know, yes . . . I AM one of those miscreants that thinks ham and pineapple are good on pizza! I do not apologise for that fact. We are all different!
Her recipe had pineapple, ham and a bit of tomato paste in it, but that didn't shout pizza to me, so I added some Italian Garlic Seasoning and grated Parmesan cheese, along with the regular cheese. (Now we're talking!)
What is pizza without those two things??? You need some Italian herbs and some garlic on a pizza and Parmesan cheese . . . it is like a Pizza's best friend!
I didn't get really high crowns like I usually do on my muffins. The cheese on top probably hampered their growth. If you look at her recipe and photo, you will see that hers don't have high crowns either. In fact she baked hers in little paper loaf cases.
I did not bake mine in paper cases. I buttered my medium sized muffin tins really well instead. I have had too many things like pineapple and cheese stick to paper cases and I did not want that to happen.
It was a good call as they did not stick and I ended up with lovely crusty sides and bottoms, which contrasted well with those lovely light insides.
Adding the Italian Seasoning was another good call as I think they would have been rather bland without it. In fact if I make them again I will up it to 3/4 tsp rather than 1/2.
Make sure you cut your ham into a tiny dice. I did it 1/4-inch which is very easily done. Just cut the ham into strips, stack them and then cut crosswise into the dice.
I think you could up the ante as well by adding a few other pizza ingredients, such as chopped olives or/and red onions, or peppers. You could use crumbled crisp bacon instead of ham if you wanted to.
Leave out the ham and pineapple and use chopped pepperoni and peppers! Onions . . . peppers!
I think you could really make these over the top delicious by adding a few extras!
We enjoyed these warm with a nice salad for lunch! (Italian dressing of course.) They would also go very well with soup!
Pizza Muffins (small batch)
Yield: 6 muffins
prep time: 9 Mcook time: 30 Mtotal time: 39 M
These are light and delicious and filled with lovely flavours. Ham, pineapple, plenty of cheese, some herbs and a bit of tomato. Scrumptious! They make a lovely light lunch!
Ingredients:
- 225g self rising flour (1 1/2 cups)
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp garlic Italian seasoning
- 75g chopped ham (about 3 ounces)
- 75g crushed pineapple, well drained (1/3 cup)
- 1 TBS tomato paste
- 1 large free range egg
- 125ml milk (1/2 cup)
- 80ml vegetable oil (1/3 cup)
- 90g coarsely grated strong cheddar cheese, divided (3/4 cup)
- 1 TBS grated parmesan cheese
Instructions:
- Preheat the oven to 180*C/350*F/ gas mark 4. Butter a 6-cup nonstick muffin tin really well. Set aside.
- Stir the flour, baking powder, Italian seasoning and 60g (1/2 cup) of the cheese ogether in a bowl. Stir in the ham, mixing all together well.
- Whisk together the oil, tomato paste, egg, milk, and pineapple to combine. Add all at once to the dry ingredients and mix together until just combined. Divide between the six prepared muffin cups.
- Mix together the parmesan cheese and the remaining cheddar. Sprinkle over top of the batter in the tin.
- Bake for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the centre of one comes out clean.
notes:
You can easily make your own self rising flour. For every cup of pain/allpurpose flour add 1/2 tsp of baking powder and 1/4 tsp of salt.
What kind pizza toppings are your favourite? I love pizza with everything on it . . . Italian sausage, mushrooms, peppers, onions, pineapple, ham and plenty of cheese!
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