Savoury Breakfast Muffins by The Fat Foodie
Sometimes at the weekend I like to make something a little bit more special for breakfast than the usual toast, porridge or cereal that I would usually have during the week. There’s something really nice about having the luxury of time on a Sunday morning to make a batch of syrup-drenched fluffy pancakes or a stack of french toast and take it back to bed with a hot cup of tea or coffee.
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Lemon and Poppyseed Muffins by The Fat Foodie
The other day I was contacted by the publisher Modern Books and asked if I’d like to review a copy of Calm Belly Cookbook
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Chocolate Orange Carrot Muffins by The Fat Foodie
I like taking cakes into work. I think it’s nice to bring something tasty into the staff room for everyone to be able to enjoy when they’re on their tea breaks and lunch. I always think that there’s something warming and cosy about having some cake available for everyone to partake in, should they choose. Let’s be honest, very few people turn their nose up at a nice bit of cake.
I bought some pretty muffin cases
If you want a moist cake that’s not going to dry out in a hot environment, such as a very warm staff room, then I’d heartily recommend incorporating two components: a good oil and some sort of fruit or vegetable. You can never go wrong with basing a cake around carrots or courgette because their water content works fantastically to introduce and retain moisture in cake sponge. It’s also a bonus that you can’t even taste the vegetables in the cake once they’ve been baked.
Also, although most cakes tend to add fat to the sponge base by using butter, sadly as it cooks a lot of the water from the butter will evaporate. It will also continue to evaporate the longer the cake sits waiting to be eaten too, whereas using sunflower or vegetable oil (which does not evaporate) will ensure that the fat content (and therefore, moisture) remains present even after it’s been baked in a hot oven. It’s science, innit?
Although these chocolate orange carrot muffins are gluten-free you can easily make them standard muffins by using the same quantity of normal self-raising flour and omitting the xanthan gum and bicarbonate of soda, and only using 1 tsp of baking powder. Although why not give the gluten-free version a go? They’re really tasty and you honestly cannot tell the difference!
These chocolate orange carrot muffins are gorgeous. They’ve got an incredibly soft and bouncy texture, are infused with rich, deep cocoa and have a lovely fresh zing from the orange zest. Their whipped chocolate orange buttercream frosting also does the entire flavour combination justice. Quite frankly I think I’ve outdone myself. Now, I wonder if the boss will like them enough to give me a paid day off…
Chocolate Orange Carrot Muffins by The Fat Foodie
Ingredients:
250g of grated carrots
250g brown sugar
250g gluten-free flour (I use Dove’s Farm G/F flour
1 tsp xantham gum
50g cocoa powder
2 tsps baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
250ml vegetable oil
1/2 tsp salt
3 eggs
The zest and juice of 1 orange (keep 2 tbsps of orange juice aside for the buttercream icing)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 heaped tsp ground cinnamon
For the buttercream icing:
175g icing sugar
25g cocoa powder
50g butter (use dairy-free, if necessary)
2 tbsps orange juice
Method:
Preheat your oven to 200C/180C Fan/400F/Gas mark 6.
Lay 12 muffin cases
Measure all of your ingredients into a large mixing bowl.
Quickly mix all of the ingredients together using an electric whisk
Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes or until a skewer pushed into the middle of a muffin comes out clean.
Freshly Baked Chocolate Orange Carrot Muffins by The Fat Foodie
Leave to cool and make the buttercream by placing all of the icing ingredients into a jug and whisking until light and whipped.
Once the cakes are completely cold decorate with the buttercream icing and enjoy.
Chocolate Orange Carrot Muffins by The Fat Foodie
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Chocolate Banana Marzipan Muffins by The Fat Foodie
One of the best ways I find inspiration for my website is by looking at what ingredients need used up in my kitchen and developing a recipe around them, so when I was given a pack of marzipan by my mother-in-law recently I figured it might be nice to use up in some baking. Marzipan is made by mixing icing sugar and ground almonds into a paste, so I treated marzipan in the same way I would almonds and made sure that the quantity of marzipan in the muffins was a low FODMAP portion.
Ripe bananas (i.e bananas which are very yellow and have brown spots on them) are high FODMAP, so don’t use them for these chocolate banana marzipan muffins. However, firm bananas (yellow and firm with no spots) are low FODMAP, so use this type. This recipe makes at least 10 muffins, with one muffin being a low FODMAP portion.
In the bookshop that I work in we sell a book called The Flavour Thesaurus
This recipe for chocolate banana marzipan muffins is a winner in my book because as the marzipan cooks it melts through the chocolate banana muffins to create little pockets of sweetness that infuse the surrounding cake with the delicate flavour of almond. As a result, you’ve got a deliciously moist muffin that’s the perfect blend of cocoa and banana flavoured cake base with the added surprise of almond marzipan chunks throughout it. That’s pretty damn tasty in my book.
Ingredients:
175g gluten-free flour (I use Dove’s Farm G/F flour
100g dark brown sugar
1 tsp xanthan gum
1 tsp ground cinnamon
3 tbsp cocoa
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
80g marzipan (rolled into small balls)
3 firm bananas (mine weighed 330g in total)
125ml sunflower oil
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
Method:
Preheat your oven to 200C/180C Fan/400F/Gas mark 6.
Lay out your muffin cases
Measure your bananas, oil, eggs and vanilla extract into a mixing bowl.
In a separate bowl measure all of your dry ingredients.
Break the marzipan up into small pieces and add them to the dry ingredients, mixing them through so they become coated.
Add the wet mixture into the dry and mix thoroughly.
Divide the mixture between the muffin cases
Leave to cool.
Chocolate Banana Marzipan Muffins by The Fat Foodie
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