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The other day I baked us a batch of Bran Muffins from a new recipe that, whilst they tasted alright, were very much of a disappointment to me. They were flat, overly sweet and just not a recipe I would recommend to anyone. I wanted to be able to share something delicious with you that you wouldn't be embarassed to serve to anyone.
I hasten to add that I didn't change anything in the recipe, but prepared it exactly as presented. I don't know why these things happen. One man's meat is another man's poison I guess! Anyways, I have this great muffin recipe book that I got maybe 11 years ago.
Entitled Mad about Muffins and written by Diana Bonaparte, it is a muffin cookbook that I cannot recommend highly enough. Every single recipe that I have baked from it has been a great recipe!
I was intrigued by the recipe for Honey, Tahini & Sesame Muffins. I love all of those things, and it also uses lemon zest. I had ear-marked it for use quite some time ago and this morning I finally got around to making them.
I did adapt the recipe by cutting everything in half. The full recipe makes 11 muffins, but I got six nice sized medium muffins halving it.
They are not uber sweet, despite the use of honey. I don't like my muffins to be extremely sweet. Thy are not supposed to be like cake. They are supposed to be more like a bread.
The flavour of these was exceptional . . . you can taste the tahini, but more of a "hmmm . . . I taste something that tastes a bit nutty." It doesn't whack you. Of course the subtle taste of lemon is there as well.
As you can see they rose beautifully. I did get a bit of cracking on top, but thats not at all unusual in a good muffin. I think the touch of demerara sugar and sesam seeds on top is also a very nice touch and quite attractive. It also provides a tiny bit of crunch.
As you can see, they have a beautiful texture. My honey did fall to the bottom of the muffin. Not sure how to get around that. Unless perhaps you used creamed honey instead of liquid for the centres? What do you think?
All in all I would call these an excellent muffin. We both really enjoyed them. They smelled lovely when they were baking as well.
In all truth I don't know why I waited so long to make them! Tahini is something I always keep in my store cupboard and this was a great opportunity to use some of it, however small! I highly recommend! If you don't have tahini you could use peanut butter, but in that case I would leave out the lemon zest and the sesame seeds.
Small Batch Honey, Tahini & Sesame Muffins
Yield: 6
Prep time: Cook time: Total time:
The triple combination of honey, lemon and tahini paste make for a very delicious muffin indeed. Sized for the smaller family but easily doubled to feed more.
Ingredients:
For the muffins:
- 165g plain flour (1 1/4 cup)
- 65g caster sugar (1/3 cup superfine sugar)
- 1 tsp baking powder
- pinch salt
- the finely grated zest of 1/2 lemon
- the juice of 1/2 lemon
- milk (see instructions)
- 50g oil (4 TBS)
- 25g clear honey (3 1/2 tsp)
- 15g tahini paste (1 1/2 TBS)
- 1 large free range egg
- 2 tsp sesame seeds
To fill:
- clear honey
To top:
- 1 TBS demerara sugar (turbinado)
- 2 tsp sesame seeds
Instructions:
How to cook Small Batch Honey, Tahini & Sesame Muffins
- Preheat the oven to 200*C/400*F/ gas mark 6. Line a six cup muffin tin with paper liners. Set aside.
- Rub the sugar together with the lemon zest until fragrant. Sift in the flour and baking powder and a pinch of salt. Combine well together.
- Heat the honey for the muffin together with the tahini and then whisk together to combine.
- Add the lemon juice to a beaker and then add milk to give you the equivalent of 85g/3 fluid ounces. Beat in the egg and oil with a fork. Then beat in the honey, tahini mixture. Add all at once to the dry ingrdients just to combine.
- Fill your muffin cups half full. Drop a tsp of honey onto each muffin and then cover with the remaining muffin batter. Combine the topping ingredients and sprinkle some over top of each muffin.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 20 to 22 minutes until well risen and a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. The tops should spring back when lightly pressed. Transfer from the muffin tin to a wire rack to cool.
Not sure why but my recipes generator it not working today. Its an app that I actually pay for the use of so I hope that it isn't like this for long. When it comes back up again, I will replace this old format with the recipe card. I can see it, but it is not giving me the option to copy and paste it into my blog post. Between that and my facebook, I am batting zero this week! Its a good thing I am a positive person! Back to sort it out and its fixed! Yay!
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