Broccoli and Cheese Muffins #MuffinMonday

Cheesy muffins with broccoli make the perfect addition to a brunch menu.  They are equally welcome alongside a bowl of soup for a light lunch or dinner. 

Happy Sunday!  Your eyes are not deceiving you and don't bother to check your calendar thinking you have missed a day.  It is indeed a muffin recipe a day early.  Because this is a special week here at Food Lust People Love.  IT'S CHRISTMAS WEEK!  Which means that I have joined with a group of like-minded bloggers to bring you prizes to win from our generous sponsors and loads of great Christmasy recipes.  We'll have sweet and we'll have savory but we'll all have delicious!  It starts tomorrow so come on back and I hope to see you munching one of these wonderful cheesy broccoli muffins as you sign up for the giveaways!

Ingredients
3 1/2 oz or 100g fresh broccoli florets
Drizzle olive oil
2 cups or 250g flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
Few good grinds of fresh black pepper (about 1/4 teaspoon)
8 1/2 oz or 240g extra sharp cheddar
2 eggs
1/4 cup or 60ml sunflower or canola oil
3/4 cup or 180ml milk
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce (We prefer Lea & Perrins.)

Method
Cut your broccoli florets into tiny florets and chop the stem bits into small pieces.   Pan-fry them in a non-stick pan with a drizzle of olive oil for a just a few minutes.  Set aside to cool.

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and grease your 12-cup muffin pan liberally with canola, butter or non-stick spray.  I don’t recommend using muffin liners when baking with cheese because the muffins are hard to remove from the paper.

Grate your cheese.  Put aside a large handful of about one ounce or 25g for topping the muffins.  When the broccoli is cool enough to handle, count out 12 small florets for decorating the muffin tops and set aside with the handful of cheese.

Put your flour, baking powder, pepper and salt in a large bowl.  Add in the grated cheese and stir.

Now add the bulk of the cooled broccoli and stir to combine.

In another bowl, whisk together the oil, milk and eggs and Worcestershire sauce.

Pour your wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and fold them together until just mixed.  This is a really stiff batter, almost a dough.  But trust.  When the muffins bake, all that cheese is going to melt and you will end up with lovely tender muffins.

Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups.

Top each with some reserved cheese and a tiny floret of broccoli.

Bake in your preheated oven about 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

All done!

Cool on a rack for a few minutes and then remove the muffins from the pan to cool completely.  If, despite liberal greasing, your muffins still stick to the pan, just run a knife around the outside of each muffin and they should pop free.

Enjoy!   See you back here tomorrow for the start of Christmas Week!

Jalapeño Cheddar Muffins #MuffinMonday

Anyone who has ever been a new kid in school will understand my overwhelmed feelings the first day I walked into the fourth grade classroom at St. Thomas More back in 1972.  I was nine years old and had been living overseas since I started school.  This Catholic grade school in Houston, Texas was just as foreign.  And I was one of the only children in the whole student body with divorced parents.  An oddity.  Every grade had two homerooms and each homeroom had 30 children.  So many more students than I was used to.  I gradually got to know the other girls and boys in class and joined the Girl Scouts.  I made friends with a small group of girls that are still among my best friends today.  We picked up a few more in high school to round out our gang.

Last weekend, instead of baking these cheesy spicy muffins for posting today, I was celebrating our collective fiftieth birthdays in the party city of New Orleans.   We rented a house in the French Quarter and worked our abs by laughing harder and more often in those three days than I have laughed for years.  There is nothing like a group of friends who know your old secrets and keep them, except when they make a great story when you are all together.

We have so many inside jokes and shared adventures and traditions but one of my favorites is that we always take a photo at each wedding of all the girlfriends with the groom.  Here's the one from our wedding more than 27 years ago.

My sweetie (Isn't he handsome?!) with my beautiful friends.  

And here we all are now.  Seven of us have been friends for more than 40 years!  We just met the immobile girl in the middle.

So, I am baking muffins this morning on actual Muffin Monday and our chosen ingredient is peppers.  If you have been reading along for a while, you know I love spicy things and cheesy makes everything better.  These are perfectly both.

Ingredients
2 cups or 250g flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon English mustard powder
16 oz or 450g extra sharp cheddar
2-3 jalapeño peppers
1-2 Fresno peppers
2 eggs
1 cup or 240ml milk
1/4 cup or 60ml canola

Method
Preheat oven 350°F or 180°C and prepare muffin pan by greasing or lining with paper muffin cups.  When I am baking with cheese, I find that the paper liners stick to my muffins so I usually just grease the pan.  You might want to do the same.

Cut 12 thin slices off of the skinny ends of your peppers and set aside to use for decoration before baking.  Chop the rest of the peppers finely, removing the seeds first, if you don’t like things too spicy.

Grate your cheese.  Set some aside for sprinkling on top of the muffins before baking.

In a large bowl mix together your flour, baking powder, mustard powder and salt.  Add in the big pile of cheese and stir until well mixed.

In a smaller bowl, whisk your milk, canola oil and eggs.

Pour your wet ingredients into your dry ingredients and stir until just combined.

Now fold in the chopped peppers.

Evenly distribute the batter among the muffin cups.

Top with the extra cheese and one slice of pepper per muffin.

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool for a few minutes in the pan.

Remove the muffins from the muffin pan and finish cooling on a rack.

Enjoy!