More muffins for springtime

A couple of slightly unusual variations on the muffin theme.

Savoury muffins

Because some people don't like sweet stuff!

1 cup/ 100g/ 4 oz No 1 baking mix

1/3 cup/ 25g/ 1 oz oatmeal or gf porridge oats

1/3 cup/ 25g/ 1 oz grated parmesan cheese

1 heaped tsp poppy seed

2 heaped tsp sunflower seed

1 tsp baking powder

Black pepper

10 stoned green olives, chopped

1 egg

Water – at least ½ cup/ 125ml

Stir dry ingredients together thoroughly.  Blend wet ingredients together and stir into dry ingredients, adding more water if needed to make a dropping consistency, then stir the chopped olives through the mixture.  Spoon into a greased muffin pan or similar and bake at 200 degrees C for about 35 minutes.  Makes around 6 muffins.

These keep for about three to four days and are good split and buttered.

Sesame apple muffins

A twist on the usual muffin model with this recipe, as the maize meal goes into the wet ingredients, not the dry ones.  This gives it a kind of pre-soak, and seems to counteract that slightly gritty texture you can get otherwise with cornmeal/polenta products.

The main background picture for this blog is a photo of a tray of these, incidentally.

1 cup/ 4 oz/ 100g No 1 baking mix

1 heaped tsp baking powder

1 heaped tsp xylitol

2 tsp cinnamon

3 tsp sesame seeds for the mixture, plus about the same again to top the muffins

1/3 cup/ 1 ½ oz 45g fine maize meal or fine polenta

1/3 cup cold water

2 heaped tsp tahini

1 small tart apple

½ tsp vanilla essence

1 large or 2 small eggs

1 tbsp vegetable oil

More water – probably about another 1/3 cup

Mix the maize meal with 1/3 cup of water and leave to soak for 10-15 minutes.  Mix together the baking mix, baking powder, xylitol, cinnamon and sesame seeds.  Grate the apple, cored but with the peel still on, and stir into the maize meal and water.  Add the tahini, oil and vanilla and stir thoroughly, then beat the egg and add.  Mix the wet ingredients into the dry and add more water as needed to get a rather wet mixture.  Spoon into muffin cups or a bun tin and top each muffin with ½ a tsp of sesame seeds.  Bake at 150 degrees C for 35 – 40 minutes.  

These are really good cut in half and toasted when they’re a couple of days old.