Surprise powerhouse muffins

Powerhouse muffins - what else could you possibly call muffins that have, as part of the ingredients, peanut butter, mashed banana, fresh pineapple, flaxseed powder, toasted skin-on almonds, raw cauliflower...

Wait, what? Cauliflower? That smelly vegetable? In a sweet muffin? Oh yes, you read that right, people. This muffin recipe actually does have raw cauliflower as an ingredient. If you're like me, you'd be wondering why anybody would want to add cauliflower to a muffin. (If you're not like me and you routinely add inappropriate ingredients to your recipes and make a success of them, what are you doing reading this blog in the first place??? My conservative - in terms of mixing and matching food ingredients - blog will hold no surprises for you!)

But while I might not come up with weird and wonderful food ideas all on my own, I'm still capable of recognising weird and wonderful food ideas when I come across them on other blogs. And, assuming the weirdness and wonderfulness does not seem completely insane to me, I can be intrigued into trying out the weird and the wonderful for myself, just to see if the weird and the wonderful can actually come together and make something edible and tasty.

I really, really didn't think the muffins would turn out well - in the sense that they would appeal to my tastebuds, especially with me knowing about the cauliflower. (I would have preferred to make them without me knowing, to be honest, but I just couldn't bend reality enough. Should have tried harder, maybe...) I was doubtful about the muffins' edibility mainly because I'm not one of those people who eat dreadful-tasting things merely on the dubious grounds that they're "healthy". My healthy has to come strongly disguised as tasty, let me tell you.

Anyway, as I was saying, I was sufficiently taken up with the thought of trying out the muffins on Pete (what, did you think I'D actually eat one first???), so I went ahead and made them, with a couple of minor changes in ingredients and quantities. (The original recipe can be found here.) As it turned out, even if I'd wanted to be the guinea pig, Pete didn't give me the chance. He sneaked one while it was quite hot and still cooling on the countertop, and pronounced them "lovely". To be fair, they smelt really rather nice.

I let him eat the muffin fully and start on another before I said: "The muffins are nice, are they?"

"Oh yeah, really soft and fruity."

"Oh good," I said, happily. "So do you want to know what's in them?"

He regarded me suspiciously, mid-bite. "What? I suppose you're going to say it's something dreadful?"

"Depends on what you'd consider dreadful." I grinned at him. "It's got pureed cauliflower in it!"

He looked at the half-eaten muffin in his hand like it was an apple in which he'd found half a worm.

"Cauliflower?" he repeated in pained disbelief. "What in god's name made you think of making muffins with cauliflower?"

"It was a recipe I saw on a blog," I said. "Obviously it works, because you couldn't taste or smell the cauliflower. Glad you tasted it first, though."

He made a few noises like he was going to be sick, while swallowing the rest of the muffin. "For god's sake, don't sppring this sort of thing on me!" he grumbled.

And then he went back to the kitchen to get himself another muffin.

Recipe for: Powerhouse muffins



Ingredients:

1/2 (heaped) cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup peanut butter (I used chunky, and I'm glad I didnt use 1/2 cup as I found the peanut butter taste far too strong - and sort of overbaked, too, when I tasted a muffin)
1 large banana, mashed with a fork
1/2 cup raw cauliflower puree (leave out the stem, use just the "flowers" in the puree)



1/4 cup fresh pineapple puree
1 large egg
1 cup whole-wheat self-raising flour
1/4 cup powdered flaxseeds
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp vanilla extract
15-20 skin-on almonds (toasted and chopped)

Method:

1. Heat oven to 180C/350F. Spray 12-cup muffin tray with non-stick spray or use silicone liners (which I sprayed anyway).

2. Mix brown sugar, flaxseed powder,



mashed banana, pineapple



and cauliflower purees,



egg,



peanut butter,



and vanilla extract. Mix well.

3. In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking power and baking soda.



Pour into puree mixture, stirring just until mixed. The batter will be lumpy.



Lightly stir in the chopped toasted almonds.



4. Divide batter into muffin cups and bake till the muffins are done (20 minutes or more, depending on your oven).



Test with a toothpick to check. Best served warm and fresh, but can be reheated to good effect in a microwave oven.

Eggless peanut butter cookies

My young cousin Hema is visiting from India, and she’s apparently determined to “learn cooking” from me. The irony is that I’m not doing much cooking at all at the moment because my mother’s here – I know, it’s not fair to leave it all to her, but the thing is, she’s at home all day and I am at work all day… so, given the circumstances, it all works out conveniently well for everybody (yes, especially me.) Anyway, I do cook on weekends, so I’m not taking total and unashamed advantage… or so I like to believe. (Kind readers, please don’t stick the needle of derision in my pathetic little bubble of denial!)

So the project for the day in the cookery department was a simple one, courtesy Hema – peanut butter cookies. It didn’t strike me to ask about her choice till later, although I remember thinking that it seemed a bit strange – well, very American, in other words. When I did ask her, eventually, where she’d eaten peanut butter cookies before, she replied that she never had. Then how did she come up with that suggestion? Apparently, because she likes peanut butter.

Oh. Right.

So peanut butter cookies it was. And in consideration of my mother shunning eggs and everything containing eggs, we made the cookies eggless.



Now I’ve never eaten peanut butter cookies before. I wasn’t even a fan of peanut butter till fairly recently, and even the jazzed up chilli-hot Indian-style “peanut chutney” didn’t quite tempt me. As for the American fascination with peanut butter-and-jam (I refuse to call it jelly) sandwiches, I’ve been known to accuse it of being weird… but everything comes full circle and I now am forced to admit that I’m rather partial to peanut-butter-and-orange-marmalade on toast… something in which I try not to indulge too often!

Anyway, to come back to the point, since I’m not burdened with a sweet tooth and there aren’t any takers for cookies in my house, I’ve never really tried my hand at baking cookies.

I’m actually going to deliberately deviate from the point now – fair warning, right? My first attempt at baking was a recipe for lemon cookies. The recipe seemed simple enough, so I beat and mixed and rolled the dough into balls and placed them on a tray and gave them spreading space - everything seemed to be going swimmingly well as I put the trays in the oven.

The recipe said to bake the cookies for 8 minutes; eight antsy minutes later, I checked the cookies – they were still soft, so back inside they went for another few minutes. They remained stubbornly soft 10 even more antsy minutes later, and I was certain that the recipe had got the baking time wrong. So I just went on baking them. Eventually when the cookies had firmed up through the centre (the edges had gone extremely brown – pretty much black - by then) to my satisfaction, I took the trays out. The recipe instructed me to let the cookies cool for 3-4 minutes before removing them from the tray, so I waited the requisite number of minutes, then tried to detach a cookie to taste it.

It didn’t budge.

I tried again with another cookie, trying to lift it off the tray.

The entire tray rose in the air, but the cookie stayed firmly attached to it.

I tried chipping them off off with various things – a spatula, a knife, a cake slice, even a chisel… but the cookies just crumbled into bits. Pete tasted the bits and said that they were nice (which was very kind of him, because those things were anything BUT nice)… but comforting though his words were, I wasn’t – and am not – as dumb as I looked, and I knew I had a first class disaster on my hands. Or on my trays, to be literal. So I dumped everything in the bin – cookies, crumbs, tray and all.

I blame the recipe, of course I do. I didn’t know that cookies firm up as they cool… why would I? I’d never had a proper oven, never done any baking… and the recipe didn’t think to mention that little fact. To be fair, I guess to experienced bakers, that particular fact is basic knowledge – so basic that they just assume everybody knows it. But I didn’t… so when the cookies felt soft, I assumed that they hadn’t baked enough. And so it turned out a recipe for disaster.

I didn’t try baking cookies for ages thereafter, so making these peanut butter cookies cookies was more or less a “first” for me and Hema both. I didn’t quite know how they would turn out, but one thing I knew for sure – I would stick to the baking time specified!



As it turned out, we must have underbaked the cookies a little, for they stayed just a wee bit soft in the centre even after cooling. But they tasted so good – slightly salty, somewhat sweet – that I don’t think anybody minded.

Recipe for: Eggless peanut butter cookies



Ingredients:

1-1/2 cups AP flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup demerara sugar (or brown) + extra for sprinkling
1/4 cup sugar
2 tbsp cornflour
2 tbsp water
2-3 tbsp milk

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180C and line two baking sheets with non-stick paper. In a small bowl, whisk together the cornflour and water. Reserve.

2. Mix flour, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl.

3. Beat butter, peanut butter and vanilla in a large bowl until well blended.



4. Beat in both sugars.

5. Stir in half of the flour mixture.



6. Add cornflour mixture and continue mixing, then add the remaining flour mixture and stir it in.



At this point I found the dough to be very very dry, so I added milk, tbsp by tbsp and kneaded it until the dough could be rolled into a ball. (Or rather, my cousin did all this under my - ahem! - supervision!)

8. Roll the dough into 1" balls. Arrange the balls 1/2 inch apart on baking sheets (the cookies wont spread much).



With a fork, flatten the dough balls and make a criss-cross pattern on top.

9. Sprinkle with demerara sugar and bake in a 180C/350F oven for 15-16 minutes, until the cookies are dry on top.



10. Remove baking sheets from oven and let the cookies remain on the sheets for 3 minutes,



then remove to racks and let cool completely before storing in an airtight box.

ARF/5-a-day-Tuesday #6 - Broccoli in peanut sauce

Another broccoli entry from me for ARF/5-a-day Tuesday #6, usually hosted by Sweetnicks, but this week being hosted by Stephanie, the Happy Sorceress.

Since finding out that peanuts are a good source of anti-oxidants, well, I just HAD to use them along with my veggies for this event. I've had this broccoli recipe for a while, printed off from one of the food groups that I've subscribed to, and I've tweaked it only slightly. A lot of the recipes are too complicated or call for ingredients not available in the UK - fair enough, the groups are mostly US-based, so it's to be expected. But this recipe seemed interesting and simple, and even better, perfect for the Tuesday event.

It is vaguely reminiscent of Thai cuisine, although I suppose peanut butter isnt the most authentic of Thai ingredients. And come to think of it - couscous isnt really a hallmark of Thai cooking either.... Okay, so perhaps it ISNT reminiscent of Thai cuisine. Let's just say it's a pretty darn good recipe, and leave it at that!

Recipe for: Broccoli in peanut sauce



Ingredients:

1/4 c peanut butter
1 tbsp sugar
1 1/2 tbsp hot water
Juice from half a lime (about 2 tbsp)
1 generous tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil
3 whole dried red chillies (or 1/2 tsp chilli flakes, if you dont like chillies)
1 1/2 tbsp oil
2 cups fresh broccoli, in florets
1 medium carrot, cut into matchsticks (or use red bell pepper)
1 small onion, thinly sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
A handful of roasted peanuts, for garnish

Method:

1. Put the broccoli in a big bowl of very hot water for 4 minutes. Remove, refresh under cold running water and set aside in a colander to drain.



2. Combine peanut butter, sugar, water, lime juice, soy sauce, sesame oil, and pepper in a blender or spice grinder, until the chillies are well blended. Set aside.

3. Heat the oil in a wok. Add the onions, carrots/bell pepper and garlic, and
stir-fry for 4 minutes, or until tender crisp.



4. Add the broccoli and stir. Remove from the heat after 1 minute.

5. Place the vegetables in a bowl and pour the peanut sauce over it.



Mix well and serve warm over couscous (I flavoured mine with lemongrass and fresh coriander) or with noodles.