Saffron Series I: Lucia Muffins

Ever since I started cooking ‘adventurously’ – or rather when I became vegetarian and had to eat different food from my non-veg family – I have been curious about saffron. It’s one of those ingredients that your average person doesn’t have in their pantry (at least, not where I come from) but it IS one of those ingredients that always seems to crop up where you least expect it – in a home and garden magazine, on food network or in one of your favourite recipe books. Then you consider buying some and giving the recipe a go, but never seem to get around to it or simply feel to cheap to justify splurging on buying some. To cut a long story short, I felt like that for years until this year I finally bought some…and found out that my mother already had a packet in her sorely neglected pantry. Unfortunately her packet expired last year, but I may still attempt to use it. But basically, between the two of us, we have lots of saffron! Therefore, expect to see various saffron recipes on this blog in the near future (sneaking in between other posts, of course) hence why this post is titled ‘Saffron Series I.’ I am also going to add ‘Saffron Series II’ when I am done with this post.

Possibly muffins weren’t the best place to start – my last post was about muffins AND included sultanas – both of which have featured heavily of late. But I’m of the opinion  that one can never make too many muffins, and the recipe for these came from 101 cookbooks, so it must be good! I actually made them a while ago and I don’t remember how much I fiddled with things so it’s probably best to refer to the original recipe. My only words of advice would be DON’T OVERMIX. I know baking recipes always say that, but I found my batch of muffins were a bit tougher than my usual, so I may have been a little too aggressive with the batter. Click here for the recipe for Lucia Muffins from 101 Cookbooks. Enjoy!

Molasses Oaty Muffins

As indicated from my last molasses post, I’ve got molasses on the brain. First it was treacle in baking, now it’s molasses…well, at least that’s a healthier progression, right? I made these this morning and was very satisfied with them. I was initially incredulous at their success, given that molasses is the only sweentener (and I suppose the sultanas or raisins) in the recipe. These muffins have this amazing ability to be vaguely sweet but also seem slightly savoury at the same time – quite a hard thing to come by! Their only downside was that I felt a bit unoriginal pairing molasses with sultanas again – but hey, it’s a good combination! Plus I happened to have sultanas around, though the bag is now finished. Anyway, there’s lots of other delicious things in these muffins as well.

Because I didn’t adapt the recipe much (apart from substituting sultanas for raisins, which doesn’t count) and it’s available online, I’m not going to write it out. You can find the recipe here on Yummly, which was awesome enough to feature one of my posts about a salmon quiche a while back.

 

Best Banana Muffins I have ever made!

This muffin may not look like much, but I can safely say my last batch of banana muffins were probably the most delicious that I’ve ever made. I wish they LOOKED more incredible, but there you go. I only slightly adapted the recipe which was for wholemeal flour from here. I ran out of wholemeal flour (or rather, discovered moths had infested it) so mine were made with ordinary flour. I’ve also taken to using treacle rather than golden or maple syrup, which I find is a delicious variant and provides a lovely richness to baking.

2 cups flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda, salt and cinnamon respectively

2 ripe bananas, mashed

2 large eggs, beaten

approx. half a cup of treacle

1/2 cup soft brown sugar

1/3 cup milk

1/4 vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla extract/essence

3/4 chopped nuts (I used walnuts, as pretty much anything else is too pricey for me)

Preheat oven to 190 degrees and prepare a muffin tray. I used a standard 12 muffin tray, but you could probably try other sizes. Combine all the dry ingredients in a bowl. In a separate bowl, combine the bananas, eggs, milk, oil, vanilla essence, sugar and treacle. Mix into the dry ingredients, trying not to over stir – be aware that this is a fairly wet mixture! Add the chopped walnuts. Spoon batter into muffin tins and bake until an inserted skewer comes out clean, about 20-25 minutes. You won’t be disappointed!

I’m not usually in the habit of freezing my baking (it disappears so fast!) but these can be frozen. I just tried it for the first time! Pretty decent actually.

Feta, Capsicum and Oregano Muffins

Today will have to be quick post as I am BUSY BUSY BUSY. But to cut a long story short, when I got home today I had an urge to make muffins. I have had this capsicum sitting around in my fridge drawer which was begging to be used…and seeing as I had some feta as well, I thought feta and capsicum might be a nice combo in savoury muffins! Sure enough, after a 1 min a quick google search I happened upon this recipe. It is easy, quick and delicious! Highly recommended for any Australasian cook.

I chose to serve my muffin with a generous dollop of Emma’s mother’s homemade tomato relish and a chunk of feta cheese. MMMM.