Pumpkin Lemon and Poppy Seed Muffins

It's been a long time since I updated this blog. I have been cooking, it's just that I just never seemed to manage to post it.
With Hallowe'en just passed, I realised that I've never cooked with pumpkin. I haven't even used one to make a pumpkin lantern. Well, here is Scotland, when i was a girl, we didn't use pumpking for lanterns, we used turnips. Anyway, in the supermarked last week, when I saw a lonely little edible pumpkin, I thought I should take it home and make something out of it.
So I did. I browsed my cookbooks, a number of blogs, and a couple of fod magazine sites, before settling on this recipe for a pumpkin, poppy seed and lemon loaf from Delicious magazine.

I didn't actually bake it as a loaf, I made individual muffins. The full recipe made 12. I cut down the sugar a tiny bit - 125g instead of 150g, and they were still sweet enough for me. I didn't need all of the milk - only 2 tablespoons instead of the 4 called for. This may have been because the pumpkin was quite watery. If I do this again (and as there's three-quarters of the pumpkin left, there will be at least one more sweet and one savoury recipe made) I'd probably cook the pureed pumpkin down a bit to get rid of the liquid.

Double Chocolate Day

There's a guy that Duncan works with, P, who's allergic to eggs. I used to feel guilty every time Duncan took some of my baking to work - it all had eggs in it, and P couldn't have any of it. So, Amazon to the rescue. I found a book on baking wthout eggs (Bakin' Without Eggs by Rosemarie Emro), and started baking a few things from it, which seemed to be fairly well received. But then I sort of stopped baking as often, and things didn't go to work with Duncan.

However, P recently helped me out with sourcing a good price on my Dad's birthday present. He's good at that kind of thing, among all the other stuff he does to help people out, and I figured he deserved a little thank you. So I dug out the egg-free baking book, and whipped up a batch of the chocolate muffins that had gone down so well before. Apparently they went down pretty well this time too - not just with P, but with everybody else there too. So well, that I'm making another batch this weekend. Although, for variety, I plan on using Green & Black's Maya Gold cocoa, instead of their plain cocoa powder. Hopefully that should give a slight orange spice taste to them.

As the chocolate muffins were going to work, I thought we might need something else chocolatey to stay behind. This time, it was out with the not-quite-so-bad-for-you baking book (One Smart Cookie by Julie van Rosendaal), and into the chapter on brownies, where I picked a simple plain chocolate brownie.

Recipes:

Chocolate Sour Cream Cupcakes
(Adapted from Bakin' Without Eggs by Rosemarie Emro)
225 grams plain flour
50 grams cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
225 grams sugar
250 ml sour cream
125 ml vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
125 ml soda water

Preheat oven to 350F/180C Placu muffin cases in muffin tin.
In a large bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa and baking powder. Add the sugar and mix through.
In a jug, beat together the sour cream, vegetable oil, vanilla and soda water.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry, and stir until completely mixed.
Divide between muffin cases.
Bake for 15 to 20 minutes.


Easy Cocoa Brownies
(Adapted from One Smart Cookie by Julie van Rosendaal)
50 grams unsalted butter -- melted
200 grams caster sugar
1 large egg
2 large egg whites
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon instant coffee granules -- dissolved in 1 teaspoon water
140 grams plain flour
50 grams cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 350F/175C. Line an 8x8 inch pan with non-stick baking parchment.
In a large bowl, mix together the butter and sugar until well combined.
Add the egg, egg whites, vanilla and coffee. Stir until thoroughly blended and smooth.
In another bowl, combine the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt.
Add the dry ingredients, together with any optional additions, to the egg mixture and stir until just combined. Do not overmix.
Spread the batter in the pan. Bake for 25 - 30 minutes, until the edge is starting to pull away but the middle is still slightly soft. Do not overbake.
Cool in the pan. Cuts into 16 pieces.

Apple & Sultana Muffins

These muffins came about as a combination of a couple of things. A while back I was in Starbucks, standing in the queue looking at the muffins, and I had decided on the apple and whatever it was muffin. Unfortunately, someone in front of me got the last one. Then about a week ago I was watching Bill's Food, and he was making a very interesting looking apple, cherry and almond loaf. My original thought was just to make the loaf as muffins. But then I remembered those muffins, and having some sultanas in the cupboard, started making changes to the starting recipe. The almonds went immediately, and the cherries were replaced with the sultanas. I wanted to use part wholemeal flour, but not having self-raising wholemeal, I used a combination of self-raising white and plain wholemeal, adding a little extra baking powder. Not sure I added enough though. I also think I may have either added too much wholemeal flour, or not enough liquid, as the muffins turned out a touch on the dry side. Overall though, the flavour was good. I may tinker with the recipe and try these again.

Recipe:
50 grams porage oats
300 millilitres skim milk
140 grams self-raising flour
100 grams wholemeal flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 tablespoons honey
1 egg
75 grams light brown sugar
75 grams dried apple
75 grams sultanas

In a large bowl, soak the oats in the milk for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 350F/180C. Put 12 muffin cases in a muffin tin.
Sift the flours, baking powder and cinnamon into a medium bowl.
Beat the honey and egg into the soaked oats. Add the sugar and mix well.
Add the flour and dried fruit to the wet ingredients, a few spoonfuls at a time, mixing between each addition until only just combined.
Divide between the muffin cases.
Bake for about 20 minutes, until risen, golden and springy to the touch.

Date & Orange Muffins

I've modified recipes slightly before, but this week was a lot more than I've done in the past. It all started with a recipe from the WeightWatchers magazine, for date and orange muffins. However, that recipe called for use of one of their toffee yogurts, and I wasn't going to use that. They're probably full of artificial sweeteners and thickeners and all sorts of stuff, which may have its place, but that place is not in my baking. Normally I'd just substitute an equivalent, but I figured any other fat-free toffee yogurt would suffer from the same issues. So, I started looking round for other recipes. Why not just pick something different to bake? Well, I don't recall using dates before, so I wanted to try something with them.
Anyway, after a bit of looking around and not coming up with anything, I figured why not just try some more extensive modification than usual? So I did. And here's what I came up with. There isn't quite as much flavour to them as I'd like, but they're certainly acceptable. I'm sure that upping the maple syrup (I didn't actually have the full tablespoonful left in my bottle, and if making them again I'd probably double the amount), and the orange would help matters.

Recipe:
200 grams plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
50 grams dark muscovado sugar
50 grams pitted dates, chopped
100 millilitres skim milk
120 grams yoghurt (use a toffee one if you like)
1 egg
30 millilitres sunflower oil
Zest of 1 orange
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1 tablespoon orange juice

Preheat oven to 180C. Put 10 (8 if you want them bigger) muffin cases into a muffin tray.
Sift together the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda in a large bowl.
Mix in the sugar.
Whisk together the milk, yoghurt, egg, sunflower oil, maple syrup, orange juice and orange zest.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, and stir very briefly.
Sprinkle the chopped dates into the mixture. Stir very lightly and briefly until ingredients are combined.
Spoon into the muffin cases.
Bake for about 20 minutes until the muffins are risen, golden and firm to the touch.

Ginger Carrot Muffins

How much do you trust a recipe that you get from a web site? I suppose the answer to that depends on the site you got it from. Something from a food magazine, or a TV programme, or a well-know chef/cook can probably be considered to be fairly robust. The reputation of the source depends on the recipes, and we assume that those recipes are at least tested a few times, to make sure the kinks are worked out. Food blogs? Well, the authors seem to let you know when something was an experiment, or didn't particularly turn out as expected, so we can make a reasonable guess at how things might turn out for us. What about community sites, where anybody can submit any recipe, and make it available? Well, you're probably taking pot luck with those. And that's where the recipe I tried this week came from.
I like carrot cake and carrot muffins (Nigella Lawson has a wonderful recipe for carrot cupcakes in How To Be A Domestic Goddess), so when I came across this recipe for Carrot Ginger Muffins, I really wanted to give it a try.
Reading the recipe, it seems to use a method I'm not familiar with for muffins or cupcakes - that's more what I'd expect for a scone. So I decided to completely ignore that method, and go with my own feelings, based on my (OK, limited) previous experience with muffins. That means rather than rubbing the butter into the flour, the wet and dry ingredients get mixed separately, and then combined. I suppose that's one of the good things with 'community' rather than 'pro' recipes - you really get nervous about not following the pro recipe to the letter, whereas with the community one, there's less pressure.
The end result? Moist, fairly light carroty little muffins. Not really enough ginger for me, so when I do these again, I may add a little more. I think they could also have risen a little more - other recipes seem to have a little more raising agent than these did, so I may add a touch of bicarbonate of soda along with the baking powder next time. I mean, what's the worst that can happen?

Recipe:
1/2 cup wholemeal flour
1/2 cup plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
2 tablespoons unsalted butter (about 30g)
1 egg
1/4 cup skim milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup caster sugar
1 carrot, grated (about 150g)
1 teaspoon ginger root, finely grated
1/2 cup sultanas

Preheat oven to 350F/180C. Line a muffin tin with muffin cases.
Melt the butter and leave to cool slightly.
In a bowl, mix together the flours, baking powder and spices.
Combine the sugars in a large bowl.
In a jug, whisk together the egg, milk and vanilla extract. Add the melted butter and mix.
Pour the liquid into the sugars and whisk together. Add the ginger root and sultanas, and stir through.
Alternately add the flour and carrot, mixing between each addition to ensure the ingredients are just combined.
Divide the mixture between the muffin cases. Bake for 25 minutes.

Corn Muffins/Chocolate Chip Cookies

Two lots of baking done this week, one savoury and one sweet. Both of them seem to have turned out well; they certainly met with approval.
The corn muffins first. This is corn as in cornmeal - polenta. Now, I've made cornbread before, a long time ago, and I no longer have the recipe I used. So when I came across a recipe for these (fairly low calorie) cornmeal muffins in a book, I wanted to give them a go. Of course, the recipe called for one thing I've never been able to find - buttermilk. Normally, I'd substitute yogurt, but here I thought I'd try a tip I came across, and use the same quantity of milk mixed with a bit of lemon juice (1 tablespoon lemon juice made up to 1 cup with milk is, I believe, the suggested mix). It seemed to work, although I didn't use exactly that mix.
The mix seemed OK, although the muffins didn't rise quite as much as I'd hoped - maybe I did overwork it. They also stuck to the muffin cases a bit, so if (when) I do this again, I think I'll bake it in a cake pan lined with non-stick parchment, and cut it into pieces. They certainly went very well, still warm out of the oven, with the lunchtime soup.

This isn't the first time I've made these chocolate chip cookies, and if my experience with them so far is anything to go by, it's a very forgiving recipe. Cookie recipes that make more than can be fitted on a single tray need to get baked in multiple batches in my oven. Last time, the first batch turned out pretty perfectly. Luckily, as they were destined for my Dad. However, the second trayful weren't so lucky. After taking the first lot out, I'd done my usual thing of turning the oven up to a higher temperature than is required for the baking, so that when I open the door to put the tray in, it falls down to the correct temperature. I must have been distracted, because I turned it up more than usual. And forgot to turn it down again when the cookies went in. Oh dear. Well, they got whipped out of the oven a bit before their time was up, a bit browner that they should have been. And they still tasted OK. Some of them were on the verge of being singed, but nothing too bad. These went to a different set of recipients, who were apparently quite happy with them.
Nothing so dramatic with this lot. I made another change to the original recipe, besides my original substitution of golden syrup for corn syrup; the use of part wholemeal and part plain flour. I thought it might give an extra bit of texture and flavour to the cookes. It seemed to work. Another thing I'm trying with this recipe is freezing half the mix to be baked later. No idea if it will work or not, but I wanted to give it a go.

Recipes:
Corn Muffins (from 'The 1200 Calorie a Day Menu Cookbook, Nancy Hughes)
2/3 cup plain flour
1/2 cup cornmeal (I used quick-cook polenta)
2 teaspoons caster sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup skim milk
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 egg white
2 teaspoons vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 450F/230C. Put 8 muffin cases in a muffin tin.
Place the milk and lemon juice together in a bowl. Note: you can use 3/4 cup plus one tablespoon fat-free buttermilk instead of the milk and lemon juice.
In a mixing bowl combine the flour, polenta, sugar, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt.
Whisk the egg white and oil into the milk.
Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients. Pour in the wet ingredients and mix until just combined.
Divide the mixture between the 8 muffin cases.
Bake for 15 minutes. Remove from the tray immediately.

Chocolate Chip Cookies (based on one from One Smart Cookie, Julie van Rosendaal)
50 grams unsalted butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons golden syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup wholemeal flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
70 grams dark chocolate, chopped (I used Green & Black's)

Preheat oven to 350F/175C. Line two baking sheets with non-stick baking parchment.
In a large bowl beat butter and sugar together until well combined - the mixture will end up with the consistency of wet sand.
Add the vanilla, syrup, and egg. Beat together until smooth.
In another bowl combine the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt. Add the flour mixture and chocolate chips, a third at a time, to the sugar mixture, stirring after each addition until well combined.
Drop spoonfuls of the dough, well spaced, onto the baking sheets. Bake for 12 - 15 minutes, until golden and the outside is set but the middle is still slightly soft.

Rock Buns/Honey Rhubarb Muffins

Well, last weeks lemon biscotti seemed to go down well. Duncan took them to work, not realising I had plans for some of them. Luckily, he managed to rescue the half dozen I wanted to take to my dad.
A double baking session this week. I picked up some rhubarb on Saturday, and found an interesting sounding recipe for honey rhubarb muffins in one of my cookbooks; A Cook's Tour of Scotland by Sue Lawrence. However, since they contain fresh fruit, they won't last more than a couple of days. So I needed to make something else that would last a bit longer.
Browsing through one of my other books (Low-Fat Baking by Linda Fraser), I found something which I thought might turn out either pretty good, or absolutely awful: rock buns. Not something I remember having made before, so I had to have a go.
Both recipes seem to have turned out not too badly for the first try. I'm a bit disappointed with the muffins; they taste great, but seem to have fallen a bit flat. I did notice that the baking temperature was a bit higher than I'd normally expect for a muffin. Might try changing it next time. With the rock buns, I used different fruit; the recipe called for prunes and mixed peel, but I used dried apricots and cherries instead. The amount of liquid called for in the recipe also seems to make too dry a dough; I think I'll add a bit more milk next time.

Recipe: Honey Rhubarb Muffins
200 grams flour, self-raising
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
50 grams hazelnuts -- chopped and toasted
50 grams sugar, light muscovado
4 tablespoons honey
100 millilitres sunflower oil
100 millilitres yoghurt, skim milk
100 grams rhubarb -- finely diced

Preheat the oven to 200C. Put 10 muffin cases in a muffin tin.
Sift the flour, baking powder and cinnamon together into a large bowl. Stir in the hazelnuts.
In a jug, whisk together the yogurt, oil, honey and sugar.
Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients. Pour in the wet ingredients, and stir briefly. Add the rhubarb and stir until combined.
Divide between the muffin cases. Bake for around 20 minutes until risen and golden.
Best eaten warm.


Recipe: Rock Buns
2 cups plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2/3 cup caster sugar
2 ounces dried cherries -- chopped
2 ounces dried apricots -- chopped
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
1/4 cup sunflower oil
5 tablespoons skim milk

Preheat the oven to 180C. Line a baking sheet with non-stick baking parchment.
Sift together the flour and baking powder.
Stir in the fruit and lemon zest.
Mix together the milk and oil. Stir into the flour mixture to make a dough - it should just bind together.
Place spoonfuls of the mixture onto the baking sheet. Bake for 20 minutes, or until golden.

Chocolate Pear Muffins

First baking of this year. Getting a bit fed up of Christmas cake. It's very nice (Nigella's Easy Action Christmas cake from Feast, with a few variations of my own in it), but you can have too much of a good thing. I fancied something chocolatey, and had some dried pears left over from the cake, so I thought I'd make some muffins. I've adapted the Blueberry Muffin recipe from the WI Healthy Fast Food book successfully before, so I used that as my base again. This time, I added some cocoa powder and the dried pears, chopped up. They turned out OK - maybe not quite chocolatey enough, and a touch drier than I'd have ideally liked, but then, I'm picky. If I do them again, I'll probably remove a couple of tablespoons of flour, and find some way of upping the chocolate - maybe adding a little coffee?

Recipe:
80 grams unsalted butter
225 grams plain flour
2 tablespoons cocoa powder (I use Green & Blacks)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
115 grams caster sugar
225 ml low-fat yoghurt
1 egg, beaten
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
90 grams dried pears, chopped

Preheat oven to 180C / Gas 4. Put 12 muffin cases into a muffin tin.
Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda into a large bowl.
Stir in the sugar
Melt the butter and allow to cool slightly
Beat the egg into the yogurt
Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients
Add the butter and the egg/yogurt mixture to the dry ingredients. Stir to just combine. The mixture will look lumpy. This is fine - overmixing will make the muffins tough.
Add the pears. Gently mix through until evenly combined.
Divide between the 12 muffin cases. Bake for about 30 minutes until the muffins are risen and cooked.