Veggie Box Recipes :: Apple and Cinnamon Crunch Muffins

I love putting fruit and veg into cakes and the moistness of muffins means they lend themselves particularly well to these additions. I've done it before with the Courgette and Cocoa Muffins and the Scrummy Spicey Carrot Muffins . A cake that contains one of my five-a-day must be considered a health food surely?

I had 2 medium sized bramley apples in my veg box this week - not really enough for apple crumble or pie but more than enough for this tasty muffin recipe!!







Ingredients:

• 1 egg
• 120ml milk
• 60ml sunflower oil
• 2 medium cooking apples peeled, cored and grated
• 200g flour
• 100g caster sugar
• 2tsp baking powder
• 1tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/4tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

for the crunchy topping:

• 60g light soft brown sugar
• 25g chopped hazelnuts (or nut of your choice)
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Set oven to 180c / gas 4

First make your topping by mixing the sugar, nuts and cinnamon together. I use a herb chopper attachment to my Braun stick blender but you could whizz it in food mixer. You need a grainy finish, with a few nutty chunks - not too fine! Set to one side for a moment.

Next combine the egg, milk, oil and grated apple in a bowl.

Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder, bicarb, salt and cinnamon in another bowl.

Pour the 'wet' ingredients into the 'dry' ingredients and mix to a lumpy batter.

Spoon the batter into muffin cases then add a spoonful of the topping. Try and sprinkle it evenly on each muffin.

Pop in the oven for about 20mins until tops are brown and crispy.

We ate these warm from the oven with custard as pudding and cold the next morning for breakfast with some Greek yoghurt and honey. Lets face it, who doesn't like the idea of cake for breakfast? The Little Man even took one to school in his lunch box so they MUST be good!!

If you want you can add some sultanas to the wet mix too - a good handful should be enough and will earn you extra fruity Brownie points ;-)

Enjoy!

Easter Market Cake Stall

If you follow me on Twitter you'll know that I have been a busy bunny this week making lots of lovely scrummy things for a cake stall at The Shambles Easter Market in Newent. Indeed, at 10pm last night I was still decorating gingerbread men and printing off little price cards...

The weather was not promising - last time I checked the forecast it looked like a hat,scarf and fingerless mitten kinda day. When we woke up this morning it looked more like it was gonna be a wellies and umbrella kinda day.

Actually, if I'm really honest, it looked like a 'forget about the market and spend the day under the duvet' kinda day...

But all those muffins, gingerbread men, bags of  fudge and coconut ice were all packed up and ready to go. So go we did...

A suprising combination...

Mmmmmmmuffins!

My attempts at vegetable growing have not exactly been 100% successful - I've lost three of my tomato plants to blight and a lot of strawberries to slugs and the promised heatwave gave way to rain, rain and more rain so what tomatoes and peppers I do have are still quite small and nowhere near ripe. One plant, however has done spectacularly well - my courgette has been producing in abundance so we have had courgette in stirfries, courgette soup, roasted courgette etc etc. In my quest to find something different to do with courgettes I found a recipe for courgette muffins - I kid you not!

And suprisingly - they are yummy!

So for those of you who also have a surplus of courgettes - here it is. If you grate them/chop them up really fine nobody need ever know they are in there...

Pre-heat oven to 190-200c/gas 5-6 and prepare muffin tin.

In a large bowl sift together 280g plain flour, 2tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda. 1/2tsp salt, 2tsp ground cinnamon and 3tbs cocoa powder.

In a medium sized bowl beat and egg with a fork. Add 125g soft brown sugar, 90ml milk, 2tsp vanilla essence, 90ml vegetable oil and 350g (approx 3-4 medium sized) finely grated courgette - no need to peel unless you want to avoid green flecks in the finished muffin. stir well.

Pour the wet mixture into the dry and stir until combined. Batter will be lumpy but no dry flour should be visible.

Spoon into tin - should make 11 or 12 big muffins - and bake for approx 20mins.

Enjoy!!

mm mmm mmmmmmm!