Wednesday 7 March 2012

Chia & apricot carrot muffins

I am not much of a baker. Mostly because I am bad at measuring. It's not that I can't, it's that I usually don't. More accurately, I round measurements up, down, estimate, or throw out the book entirely and use whatever I have lying around that might work. That's pretty much how making these muffins went. It is hard to grate whole nutmeg and cinnamon stick into a teaspoon measure. Ever tried it? It doesn't work.

The original recipe called for raisins, pecans, flavourless oil, and all purpose flour. I used dried apricots, sunflower seeds, olive oil, and spelt flour. For good measure, I added orange zest and chia seeds to kick up the flavour and the health factor respectively. I also reduced the cooking time from 40 minutes to 25 because they were done. No one likes dry muffins and a great way to make them is to keep cooking them well after they are done. The picture to the left doesn't mention carrots except in the title. That is a mistake, there was 1 really big carrot grated really finely added to the wet ingredients, probably around a cups worth.

Once I mixed everything together, I put them in a papered (hard to read) muffin tin with an ice cream scoop. It made portioning the batter out super easy. A neat little trick I picked up from my mom. Spoons are for suckers, but scoops...Scoops!

I've never made muffins before, but surprisingly, they turned out pretty great. They ended up moist, fluffy, light, and flavourful. Chia seeds are optional, but I liked them, same with the sunflower seeds. I think you can pretty much use whatever sort of nut or seed you want or have on hand. You could probably replace the carrot with zucchini too, maybe add a bit of chocolate powder for a special treat. Ok, I'm getting a bit off track. I'm going to have to make some more muffins. Maybe with a surprise filling next time, or sprinkling of something on top, or... *And so he wandered off to bed, as dreams of future muffins swam in his head.*

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