Any Excuse to Make Muffins...

But this particular excuse is Muffin Monday 02 held by Elena at Experiments.


If you enjoy baking but find you don't always have the time, muffins (or indeed cupcakes) are the perfect thing for you. It takes no time at all to knock up a batch and - given the opportunity - they last several days in the cake tin.
Elenas theme this month is "Muffins That Make You Go Ooooh". In other words, no straightforward ingredients are allowed. This means no bog standard bran, no common chocolate chips. Basically, no mundane muffins. With that in mind, I thought I'd try a couple of recipes, one savoury and one sweet.
When I made the Rhubarb Mutton, I wanted to have something bready with it, but I had no pita bread or naan bread and white sliced just wouldn't cut the mustard. I got to thinking. What ingredients do I have in my cupboard that are sort Persian and sort of Muffiny? I came up with Chick Peas and Fresh Mint to highlight the mint in the stew. So, how about Chick Pea Muffins? Designed to be made in a Jumbo or Texas Muffin Tins, these nobbly little treats are great split and spread with butter. Rather than taste Persian though, they more resembled cornbread (the recipe had a 30/70 split of cornmeal and flour). However, they were still deliciously savoury and even better cold the next day. The unexpected bite of the chick peas is really very delicious. I have a suspicion that using hummous and/or sesame seeds would be a great variation too.
Of course, I prefer sweet muffins above all else and whilst scouring the cupboards, I found a handful of soft Werthers Originals. I had thought about making toffee chocolate muffins but I was all out of chocolate. So, what else goes really well with toffee? Paprika? No. Chicken Livers? No. Coffee? Absolutely! I grabbed Pauls secret stash of coffee beans (must try harder to hide them), ground some up in our coffee machine that was an unexpected anniversary present from my mum and inhaled their heady aroma for a while. There are some smells in the world that make things seem OK, that seem like natural mood boosters and, along with the smell of cakes or bread baking or chicken roasting, freshly ground coffee is one of those smells. The rest of the batter is straightforward, butter and sugar blended together, then eggs, then the ground coffee and flour. This coffee mixture is then dolloped into muffin cases and an unwrapped toffee (or 2!) is pressed into the centre of each. As they bake, the kitchen is filled with the scent of toffee/coffee which from here inwards will be clumsily referred to as cotoffee.
When eagerly removed from the oven, they look unassuming, almost boring. Split them open and a puddle of thick toffee spills over the moist bespeckled sponge. It is hard to restrain yourself from biting straight in but needs must and third degree burns on the lips and tongue are never pleasant. You have been warned!
(recipes to follow - bread making awaits me tonight so I'm short of time. Oh, and Dawsons Creek is on).