So my wonderful BF has requested that I refrain from baking entire cakes given that we're a household of two, he works from home, and has something of a mad sweet tooth. But similarly, in light of said sweet tooth, he does look awfully sad when I bake things and then take them to work and he doesn't get any. So in receiving a bag of fresh peaches from his Mum's tree, I had a dilemma. I dilemma I solved with muffins.
I don't care what illusion about muffins being healthy anyone tries to delude themselves with: muffins are tiny cakes. Incredible tiny cakes. I also do not endorse those giant cafe sized muffins that are the size of a baby's head. They are just bigger cakes. I like muffins to be a bit wholesome, full of fruit, sweet, moist and just big enough to stave of the urge to eat lunch at 11am. They also allow me to leave a few at home for Leith, and still supply baked goods for the Monday WIP, thus earning double kudos.
The other wonderful thing about this recipe is that peaches can be interchanged for pretty much any other kind of fruit you have to hand. Banana would be excellent. Pineapple would be amazing. Berries, apple, pear. You name it, you nom it.
In baking these muffins, one must invoke several of my fundamental rules of baking. This is a good thing. Namely:
- Bake with yoghurt wherever possible.
- Use your hands.
- No matter how much spice a recipe recommends, always use more. I don't know why so many recipes are spice shy but I call bullshit on it. If you're anything like me, use, like, three times as much, probably.*
- Lick your fingers.
- Don't measure any ingredients in crumble topping. If in doubt, add more sugar.
Ingredients:
- 1 1/2 cups flour
- 1 1/4 cup oats
- 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
- 1 1/2 tablespoons baking powder
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 2 teaspoons allspice
- 1 egg
- 1 egg white
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 1 heaped cup yoghurt
- 1/3 cup honey
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 5 peaches
- Butter
- Flour
- Brown sugar
- Oats
- Finely chopped walnuts
- All spice
Preheat the oven to 200 C, and grease a 12 cup muffin tray well.
Mix the flour, oats, baking powder, sugar and spices in a bowl. In a second bowl, whisk your wet ingredients.
Peel and dice your peaches and stir them through your wet ingredients. Stir in the dry ingredients.
Spoon into your muffin pan. Don't overfill them because you are going to add crumble topping to that business!
Rub your crumble topping together with your fingers. Don't bother measure anything, just use roughly equal proportions of all the dry ingredients (except the allspice) and mix. If it's too dry, add butter. If too wet, add more flour and sugar. Sprinkle generously over the muffins and gently press in.
Bake for 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool for 5 minutes in the pan, then on a wire rack.
*Unless your using one of my recipes, in which case I have already amped up the spices hugely. Then again, go harder than me. I will only respect you.
