The 21st Century Housewife's Blackberry and Apple Muffins

I'm continuing on the blackberry and apple theme because it is definitely that time of year here in England. Folks are picking blackberries by the side of the road and along the paths and the new season's harvest of British apples is just beginning to appear at the market and in farm shops. It’s a great time of year to be in the kitchen.

These muffins are filled with fruit, nuts and whole wheat flour so they really are good for you, They taste really lovely either for breakfast or with a cup of tea in the afternoon.

This recipe makes about 12 large muffins.

1 cup all purpose flour, unbleached is best

1 cup whole wheat flour

¾ cup walnut or pecan halves, roughly chopped

¾ cup brown sugar

3 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon mixed spice (a blend of cloves, cinnamon, coriander, ginger and nutmeg) or you can use pumpkin pie spice if it is not available

2 eggs

⅓ cup sunflower oil or other mild light oil

1 cup buttermilk (ordinary milk works too)

1 large apple, peeled and grated at the last minute

1 cup blackberries

Blend together dry ingredients in a large bowl. Gently stir in the grated apple, blackberries and chopped nuts.

Beat the eggs in a medium bowl.  Beat in the buttermilk and oil.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir together gently but thoroughly. Try to avoid breaking up too many of the blackberries.

Bake at about 350℉ (170℃ or 160℃ if you have a fan assisted oven) for 20 to 25 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre of the muffins comes out clean. (It may be streaked with blackberry which is fine; what you don’t want is any batter sticking to it.)

Cool on a wire rack. Once cool, these muffins are best kept in the fridge and brought to room temperature or gently warmed before eating. 

The 21st Century Housewife's Raspberry Almond Muffins/Cupcakes

Is it a muffin?

or a cupcake? 

This recipe kind of has a split personality, because it really can be muffins or cupcakes, depending on what you do with it. The ingredients themselves are pretty healthy. The ground and chopped almonds, raspberries and wheat germ are all great sources of vitamins and minerals. There is sugar in this recipe, but only a small amount compared to most muffins as the raspberries, coconut and almond extract lend it a real natural sweetness. So it really is up to you whether you serve them for breakfast as muffins, or dress them up and take them out for dessert!

1½ cups flour

½ cup ground almonds

½ cup wheat germ

¾ cup finely chopped almonds

½ cup desiccated coconut

¾ cup white sugar

1 tbsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

2 eggs

1/3 cup mild olive oil (not extra virgin) or mild oil of your choice

1 cup milk

1 tsp almond extract

1 generous cup raspberries

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, ground almonds, wheat germ, chopped almonds, coconut, sugar, baking powder and salt.

In a medium bowl, beat the eggs. Beat in the oil, milk and almond extract.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients in the large bowl all at once.  Very gently fold in the raspberries.

Scoop into greased or lined muffin tins. The cooking time will vary depending on your oven and the size of the muffins/cupcakes, but I usually find that 20 to 30 minutes at 350℉ or 170℃  (160℃ for fan ovens)is just about right.  The muffins are done when a skewer or piece of dry spaghetti inserted in the centre comes out clean. 

Cool on a wire rack. (Be sure to cool completely before frosting and decorating if you are using these as cupcakes.)  These are best kept in the fridge after they are cool.

The 21st Century Housewife's Blueberry and Macadamia Nut Muffins

The whole wheat flour, super fruit blueberries and macadamia nuts (which contain protein, potassium and calcium) in these muffins definitely make them good for you - the only hard part is eating them in moderation!

½ cup butter, softened

¾ cup white sugar

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla 

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup white all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 cup fresh blueberries, washed and well drained

1 cup buttermilk 

1 cup macadamia nuts, roughly chopped

Cream the butter and sugar together. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Beat in the vanilla. 

Measure the flours and baking powder into another large bowl and mix together.  Stir in the nuts and the blueberries.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients all at once and stir gently just until mixed.  Divide between 15 to 17 large muffin cups. 

Bake at 375℉ (or about 160 to 170℃) for 15 to 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.  Cool on a wire rack, and once cool, store in a sealed container. 

My Secret Ingredient

Cakes and muffins are among the things I enjoy baking most. I started out when I was a little girl with ready prepared mixes, moved on to other people’s recipes and then began to invent my own as well. When you have made cakes and muffins for as long as I have, you start to learn tricks and ingredients that make them tasty nearly every time – things that affect not just the flavour, but also the texture and mouth-feel of these treats. And one of the ingredients I have come to value the most is one I never really even liked very much to start with - buttermilk.

Buttermilk was originally the liquid that was left over when cream was churned into butter. However as butter is made on a large commercial scale these days, the buttermilk we buy in the supermarket now is cultured. Basically, lactic acid bacteria is added to skim or non fat milk. It’s perfectly safe because it is pasturized, but I don’t like to think about it too much because no cook wants to hear the word bacteria in their kitchen! However like many things that sound a bit strange, this ingredient actually makes things taste incredibly good.

I first remember buttermilk in my mother’s kitchen. Mom wasn’t really a big baker so I can’t imagine what she used it for, but I know she would drink it ice cold from the fridge. I tasted it once and was horrified. Thicker than ordinary milk, with a tart, almost sour taste, it didn’t impress my childish taste buds one bit. Such was my dislike that when I discovered a muffin recipe not that much later which called for it, I made it a point to substitute ordinary milk. I avoided buttermilk like the plague. It wasn’t until just a few years ago that I decided to make that old recipe actually using the real thing.

It was a revelation. The muffins had more body, and thus a more satisfying mouth feel. The sugar in the muffin recipe offset the buttermilk’s tart flavour, and it somehow made them taste even better. I started to use it regularly in muffins. Now people have been using buttermilk in muffins for years, but one day I got to thinking about what the results would be like if I used buttermilk in my cakes. I’d heard about using mayonnaise in chocolate cakes, and although I had never done it myself, I had tasted cakes made with it that were delicious. So much against my better judgement I used buttermilk in a sweet cake recipe – my devil’s food cake recipe in fact. The results were fantastic. Just like in muffins, the buttermilk gave the cake more body and enhanced the flavour. It didn’t make it taste any less sweet, and it was just somehow better.

Since then I’ve been using buttermilk in a lot of my recipes. Not every cake responds well to it; very light white cakes are not enhanced by it at all, and it certainly does not work well in a classic Victoria sponge. However most chocolate cakes, especially those which involve bananas, and also ginger and spice cakes get a real boost from my now not-so-secret ingredient. Not surprisingly, cakes that take a leaf out of the muffin book, like my Carrot, Walnut and Ginger Snack Cake and my Banana Maple Walnut Loaf Cake also benefit from the addition of buttermilk.

So if you like making cakes and muffins, do yourself a favour and consider substituting buttermilk when ordinary milk is called for next time. The results may surprise and - I hope - delight you!

The 21st Century Housewife's© Carrot, Coconut and Pecan Muffins

I get an organic vegetable box every week, and do try to plan meals around it, but every once in a while I end up with things left over when the next box arrives. I first developed this recipe when I ended up with too many carrots and needed to find a tasty way to use them up. These almost border on being cupcakes, but the whole wheat flour, carrot and nuts are really good for you (and they don’t have icing) so I think they still qualify as a muffin!

2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon mixed spice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup chopped pecans
1 cup coconut
1 cup grated carrot
3/4 cup white sugar
3/4 cup light brown sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2/3 cup oil
(sunflower or mild olive oil works well, but not extra virgin olive oil)
2 cups buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla

Measure the flours, sugars, baking powder, mixed spice, cinnamon, pecans, coconut and carrots into a large bowl and stir to mix.

Beat the eggs, oil, buttermilk and vanilla in a medium bowl.

Add the egg and milk mixture to the flour mixture and stir thoroughly until well blended, but don’t beat. Divide the mixture between 24 large lined (or greased and floured) muffin cups.

Bake at about 350℉ or 170℃ for 20 to 25 minutes or until a piece of dry spaghetti inserted into the middle of a muffin comes out clean (ie. with no batter clinging to it). Keep an eye on these in the last five minutes or so of cooking or they will over-brown.

Take the muffin pans out of the oven and remove the muffins from the pans and place on wire racks. These are amazing served warm, so if you can manage to make them first thing in the morning you will be very popular indeed. (However warming muffins made the day before in the microwave or very gently in the oven is a very effective cheat if you, like me, are Not A Morning Person.) Or you can just serve them as a snack anytime.

Cool the remaining muffins and store in a sealed container (in the refrigerator if possible - bring to room temperature or warm in the microwave before eating.) These freeze well, but be sure to wait until they are completely cool before you put them in the freezer.

The 21st Century Housewife's© Banana Walnut Muffins

The cold and rainy autumn weather always makes me want to bake muffins and fruit loaves. They are delicious for breakfast or a snack, and the ones that involve fruit and nuts do actually qualify as pretty nutritious, although they are fairly high in sugar.

This is a really easy recipe to throw together, and is a great way to use up over-ripe bananas. It may seem odd to have both buttermilk and milk in a recipe, but trial and error has led me to the discovery that in the case of banana muffins, using all buttermilk can make the flavour slightly too rich. Having said that, buttermilk really adds something to muffins so I didn’t want to leave it out entirely - hence my compromise of half and half.

I love the spicing in these muffins, and the smell of them when they are baking makes them hard to resist. Try to use freshly grated nutmeg if you can - it really does make a huge difference to the flavour. Another tip - use the ready chopped walnut pieces that you can buy in most grocery stores. They are cheaper than walnut halves and it saves time and mess if you don’t have to do the chopping yourself.

My recipe makes a big batch of 24 large muffins, but that is no problem as they freeze very easily once cooled. If you really don’t want 24 muffins, just pour half the mixture into a loaf tin and make a banana walnut loaf instead of all muffins. You just have to remember to bake it for longer - about 50 to 60 minutes, instead of the 20 to 25 minutes the muffins take.

2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 cup chopped walnuts
3 medium ripe bananas, mashed
3/4 cup white sugar
3/4 cup light brown sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2/3 cup oil
(sunflower or mild olive oil works well, but not extra virgin olive oil)
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup milk

Measure the flours, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and walnuts into a large bowl and stir to mix.

Place the mashed bananas in a medium bowl and add the sugars, eggs, oil, buttermilk and milk. Mix thoroughly.

Add the banana and sugar mixture to the flour mixture and stir thoroughly until well blended, but don’t beat. Divide the mixture between 24 large lined (or greased and floured) muffin cups.

Bake at about 350℉ or 170℃ for 20 to 25 minutes or until a piece of dry spaghetti inserted into the middle of a muffin comes out clean (ie. with no batter clinging to it). Keep an eye on these in the last five minutes or so of cooking or they will over-brown.

Take the muffin pans out of the oven. Remove the muffins from the pan and cool on wire racks. I feel obliged to mention here that these are delicious warm from the oven with a nice hot cup of tea!

Once cooled, store in a sealed container in the refrigerator if possible. (Bring to room temperature or warm in the microwave before eating.) To freeze, wait until completely cool and then seal in freezer bags or containers before freezing.

The 21st Century Housewife's© Pear and Almond Muffins

We are still enjoying the wonderful fruits of the autumn season in our house, especially the wonderful pears we have been getting. I have a lot of pears to use up before we go on our holiday to Athens though, so I decided to do some baking this afternoon. I love the flavours of pear and almond together, and as I also had some ground almonds in the store cupboard, I decided to experiment. The result was a batch of cake-like muffins which were a lovely tea time treat. (It’s not just me who thought so, my family thought they were so tasty that I almost did not have enough muffins to photograph!)

This recipe makes about fifteen large muffins. I tried to just make twelve and as you can see they over-flowed the muffin cups a bit! I like to grate the pears as it distributes them very evenly throughout the batter, but if your pears are very ripe it might be easier to chop them in small pieces as very ripe pears can disintegrate if you try to grate them. Wait until the last minute to prepare the pears, grating them into the dry ingredients just before you mix the wet and dry ingredients together in order to prevent the pears from going brown.

I have not tried it, but I am almost certain that if you did not have any buttermilk to hand, ordinary milk would work. The flavour might be slightly different, but I doubt it would make the muffins any less delicious!

I have to say, despite their cake-like sweetness, I would have absolutely no objection to having one of these for breakfast - and will do so tomorrow if there are any left!

2 eggs, lightly beaten
125 ml buttermilk
50 grams butter, melted and allowed to cool slightly
1 teaspoon almond flavouring
200 grams plain (all purpose) flour
150 grams ground almonds
150 grams light brown sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
pinch of salt
2 or 3 pears

Preheat oven to 170℃ or 350℉. Line muffin cups with paper liners.

In a medium bowl or pitcher, mix together the eggs, buttermilk, melted butter and almond flavouring.

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, ground almonds, sugar, baking powder and salt. Peel and core the pears, and grate them into the dry ingredients, mixing thoroughly.

Pour the wet ingredients over the dry ingredients and the pears in the large bowl. Fold in gently but firmly. Do not beat, but make sure everything is thoroughly mixed together.

Divide the mixture between about 15 large muffin cups or about 20 smaller ones. I like to use an ice cream scoop to get the batter into the muffin cups with as little mess as possible.

Bake large muffins for about 20 to 25 minutes, watching carefully to make sure they do not get too brown. (Smaller muffins will take less time to cook.) Muffins are done when a piece of dry spaghetti inserted into the middle comes out without any batter clinging to it.

Remove from muffin tins and allow to cool on wire rack - although these smell so good (and taste so yummy warm) they may not last long enough to cool!