Carrot Apple Pecan Muffins

One major US export to the UK has to be muffins. When I was a girl, muffin translated as a flat-ish buttery, rich bread, fairly plain, that went equally wonderfully with lashings of jam (I'm trying to live up to the British stereotype and use words like lashings. Makes me feel all Swallows and Amazons. Love it) as with a poached egg and hollandaise sauce. Absolutely delicious – neither sweet nor savory and I shall forever have fond memories of Sunday supper with the family, sitting in the living room with a pot of tea, a stack of toasted muffins and watching the BBC adaptation of the Chronicles of Narnia.

American muffins could not bring to mind a more different picture. I always think of blueberry muffins, maple syrup, brunch and a typical US dinner, full of booths and shiny metal. American muffins are rarely basic. They come in a huge variety of flavours – the only limit to what hasn’t been included in a muffin is the kitchen sink. Not to do them a disservice, for I very much enjoy the American muffin, but often times home made versions have lots of flavour but the underlying texture is just not right at all. Too heavy or dry or just a bit cloyingly sweet.

These are those muffins which stopped one step short of said kitchen sink, but dry or cloyingly sweet they are not. They’re packed with yummy ingredients and flavours, plus you don’t feel horribly unhealthy eating them as the bulk of the mix is made up of grated carrots and apples. Must count for at least a couple of your 5 a day, right??! The crumble element does add a fair amount of sweetness though, so depending on how you like your muffins, omit or include as you see fit. Works well either way!

Carrot Apple Pecan Muffins

Adapted from The Ottolenghi Cookbook
Makes about 12 muffins (very generously!)

Ingredients:
300g Plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
pinch of salt
4 eggs
160ml Sunflower oil (or other flavourless oil)
280g caster sugar
2 tsp vanilla
220g peeled carrot, grated
200g bramley apple, grated (or Granny Smiths - any tart apple)
100g Pecans, roughly chopped
100g Sultanas
50g flaked coconut (the recipe calls for flaked, I used desiccated)

Crumble Topping:
50g Unsalted butter, cut into cubes
75g Plain flour
25g brown sugar
50g rolled oats
15g sunflower seeds
25g pumpkin seeds
1 tsp water
1 tsp sunflower oil
1 1/2 tbsp honey

First, make the crumble topping. Rub the butter into the flour and sugar with your fingertips until its in nice small pieces, like breadcrumbs. Then mix in the oats and seeds and then the water, oil and honey. It should resemble wet sand in texture. Pop to one side while you make the muffins.

Preheat the oven  to 170C/340F/Gas Mark 3. Line a muffin tin with paper cases.

The method for making the muffins is the classic mix the wet together and the dry together and then very carefully fold the dry into the wet. So...

Sift the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt together.

In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs, oil, sugar and vanilla essence together. Stir in the apples and carrots, then mix in the pecans, sultanas and coconut. Then gently fold the flour into the wet ingredients, only mixing JUST enough. Gluten, which makes the muffins chewy, is developed through over working of the batter. So mix as little as possible and they'll be just yummy!

Spoon them into the paper cases, filling to the top so you get the classic muffin tops. Crumble over the topping generously and bake for 25 mins. They're ready when they're springy on top and a skewer comes out clean. I made them a week or so ago so I can't remember exactly how long mine took to cook, but I have a feeling that they took a touch more than 25 minutes... Anyway, they actually taste better when they're left to sit for a couple of hours to let the flavours develop.

Normally, the WORST thing about home baked American muffins is their shelf life – I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a muffin which lasted beyond a day. But these are oh so different. I think it must be the carrots and apples again because they improve in flavour after a few hours of sitting and were just delicious several days after baking. Would be perfect for a brunch as they're wholesome, hearty, and taste just as great the next day.

Rosy xx

SMS - Fresh Peach Muffins

I managed it this week! A Sweet Melissa Sundays post on a Sunday – yaaaayyy! Wonders will never cease…

So this Sunday it’s Fresh Peach Muffins and it’s hosted by Mrs G of The Givens Chronicles. Do spend some time looking at all the other awesome posts on the blogroll.

I was so excited when she chose this recipe – this is just the kind of recipe which makes me so pleased I joined SMS. It’s not something that I would normally pick to bake from a cookbook – don’t get me wrong, I love peaches but it’s the muffin part. I’ve just never had that much success with them. I guess I put it down to the UK flour (we can’t get cake flour over here. After much research, it turns out there’s something in the bleaching agents used that means it can’t be sold in the UK. Boooo!) or the inconsistencies associated with cup measurements*, but I always ended up with large, dense cupcakes rather than light, fluffy muffins with the characteristic muffin tops.

But not here! I did fear for their success at one point as the one thing you shouldn’t do with cakes is overmix and I gather that’s especially true of muffins. Of course, I did these at 9pm and so messed up the method entirely – I totally forgot to add the fruit to the flour mix, something which stops the fruit from all sinking to the bottom, and I had started filling the cases before I remembered they needed cinnamon. So the small amount of mixing went out the window and these were fairly thoroughly mixed!

While I wouldn’t recommend overmixing (and I certainly wouldn’t recommend late night baking in a rush) they turned out perfectly! A touch too much orange zest for my liking so I’m going to ease up on that next time, or maybe use lemon or use orange juice instead of milk. Just needs a slightly more subtle orange flavour in my opinion but maybe my zesting was a little too zealous! Although all my testers disagree with me on that one and thought the orange added a freshness to the muffin so I might be wrong...

The one thing that’s a unanimous yes is the addition of raspberries – something I just had to add as soon as I’d seen this week’s recipe. Is there a more perfect pairing than peaches and raspberries? I used the 1 cup of chopped peaches specified in the recipe (2 regular sized peaches, peeled** and chopped) but also threw in a cup or so of raspberries. The raspberries add a gorgeous tartness as well as pretty pink streaks to the muffins.

All in all, a definite addition to my recipe collection! Perfect for a lazy breakfast. Next week it’s fallen chocolate soufflé cake. I’m dreaming about it already…



Rosy x

*so much so that I actually never measure anything but liquid in cups. I normally go though a recipe and convert everything to grams first using this website – it’s the scientist in me! I crave precise measures! Seriously, it nearly killed me measuring out a cup of chopped peaches but there’s no conversion for that. Although now I know! 2 peaches.

**I find that the easiest way to peel a peach is using the tomato method – slice a cross in the skin on the bottom of the fruit without cutting too deep. Then cover in boiling water until you see the cuts expand down the fruit (normally a minute or so). Plunge into cold water and the skins should peel away like a dream!