Christmas Ham Muffins #MuffinMonday

For just a little taste of Christmas any time of the year, make ham, pineapple and brown sugar muffins, topped with pineapple in just a little brown sugar mustard glaze.

One of the early recipes I shared on this blog was for a baked Christmas ham, covered all over with pineapple slices and maraschino cherries and slathered with brown sugar mustard glaze. Just like my grandmother used to make. I was cooking with a friend in Cairo while I was there on a house-hunting trip before our move, so the photos were pretty sad, but I can tell you that the ham was spectacular.

I give you exhibit A.

These muffins are a little sweet and a little savory and the little drizzle of brown sugar mustard glaze on top is divine.

Ingredients
For the muffin batter:
2 cups or 250g flour
1/2 cup or 100g dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup or 120ml milk
1/2 cup or 120ml pineapple juice
1/2 cup or 120ml canola oil
2 eggs
2 slices canned pineapple in juice (about 1/2 cup when chopped or 110g)
3/4 cup or 100g sliced or chopped ham

For topping:
12 small chunks pineapple
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon prepared yellow mustard
6 cocktail cherries

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and grease your muffin tin or line it with paper liners.

Cut your pineapple into small chunks and put 12 pieces in a small bowl for the topping. Add the tablespoon of brown sugar and the teaspoon of yellow mustard. Mix well.

Cut your cherries in half and set aside.

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, brown sugar, baking powder and salt.  Mash the brown sugar lumps out with a fork, if necessary.

In another bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, pineapple juice and oil.

Pour your wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and fold them together until just mixed.

Fold in the pineapple and ham.

Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups.

Put one piece of the pineapple topping on each, along with a drizzle of the brown sugar mustard glaze. Add one cherry half.

Bake in the preheated oven about 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool on a rack for a few minutes and then remove the muffins to cool completely.

Now aren't those festive?

Enjoy! Early Merry Christmas to you!

Ham and Split Pea Soup

Hands up if you like shopping in foreign grocery stores when you go away on holiday?  Or even just a different store in your hometown on occasion?  I knew I liked you!  The best part of exploring is finding items that you love, but are not typical to your locale.  For me, poking about in food stores is like an adventure hunt and when I find treasure, I can generally buy because, unless we are talking truffles or caviar, most grocery items are quite affordable.  Take, for example, my stock cube collection.

You see here just a few of my purchases from Brazil, Malaysia, Spain, and the United Kingdom among other places.  I love to use stock cubes instead of salt because they add flavor as well as saltiness to dishes.  (And, yes, most contain MSG, but no one in my family is in the small percentage of the population that has an intolerance to this flavor enhancer.)  In this soup, I used a ham cube because I didn’t have a ham bone to boil to make my own broth, but I wanted to share this in case you have a bone-in Christmas ham.  Ham and split pea soup is delicious and a great use of leftover ham.  This will make two or three hearty bowls but is easily doubled to feed more. Just double the other ingredients and boil your ham bone for longer, with more water.

Ingredients
1 medium onion
1 medium carrot
Olive oil
1 1/2 cups or 300g dried green split peas
1 ham stock cube or 1 teaspoon salt and 1 ham bone
8 – 9 oz or 225-255g leftover ham
Black pepper

Method
If you don’t happen to have a ham stock cube, put your ham bone in a pot of water with the teaspoon of salt and bring to a boil.  Simmer covered for about one hour or until all the meat is falling off the bone.  Turn off the heat and remove the bone from the pot and allow to cool enough for you to take all the ham off the bone and discard (Read: feed to your helper dog.) the grizzly bits.  Set aside.

Peel and chop your onion and carrot.  Cut your ham (either from the simmered bone or from leftover boneless ham or both!) into pieces.

In another pot (or for those of you with a ham stock cube, the only pot) sauté the onion and carrot in a little olive oil until the onion is translucent.

Add in your dried split peas and the ham cube along with about six cups or 1 1/2 liters of water (or stock from your recently boiled ham bone, if using and skip the cube.)  Give the pot a good couple of grinds of black pepper from your pepper mill.

Bring to a low boil and skim the scum off of the top of the pot with a shallow spoon.

Cook over a low to medium heat until the split peas are cooked through and are turning soft.  This could take as few as 30 minutes or as much as an hour, depending on the freshness of your dried split peas.

At this point, if you would like a very smooth soup, you can puree it in a blender or with a hand blender straight in the pot but do be careful not to scald yourself.   I prefer a chunkier soup so I just use a whisk straight in the pot to break up the split peas somewhat, while leaving some relatively intact.

Add in the ham pieces and simmer for another 20-30 minutes.  Stir occasionally and watch for scorching because once the split peas have broken down, they tend to catch on the bottom of the pot.  Add some more water if your soup is getting thicker than you like.

Check for seasoning and add a little more salt if necessary.  Give the whole pot another good sprinkle of freshly ground black pepper.

Enjoy!

Cheesy Ham Waffles

Grated extra sharp cheddar and sliced smoky ham make a great addition to buttermilk waffle batter!


Once upon a time, I saw a post on another blog for cheese and ham waffles.   And I bookmarked it to make on the weekend.  But I must confess that I didn’t read the whole post and when the weekend came, and when I DID read the whole post, I realized that the waffle was just topped with cheese and ham.  And that was certainly not what I had been dreaming about all week.  So I decided to make my own version, the one in my dreams.  And it was perfect.  And dreams can come true.

The End. 

Ingredients
1 3/4 cups or 220g flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon double-acting baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda or bicarbonate of soda
1⁄2 teaspoon salt
2 cups or 475ml buttermilk or 2 tablespoons of white vinegar and milk up to the two-cup or 475ml measure.
1/3 cup or 78ml canola or other light oil plus extra for greasing the waffle maker
2 eggs
3.5 oz or 100g strong cheddar
3.5 oz or 100g smoked ham
Butter and syrup, if desired, to serve

Method
Preheat your waffle maker as per manufacturer’s instructions.

Grate your cheddar and finely chop your ham.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients.

Add in the buttermilk (or milk/vinegar mixture which is an excellent substitute for buttermilk) and oil and the eggs.   Beat until thoroughly blended.

Add in the ham and cheese and mix well.

Using a pastry brush, grease your waffle maker with some canola or other light oil.

Pour batter into the center of the lower half of the waffle maker, being careful to leave room for when the batter spreads out as you lower the lid and also for when the waffle starts to rise when baking.

Close the lid and watch for the signal that your waffle is cooking.  On my waffle maker, the light goes green when it is ready for batter, red when it is cooking and then green again when the waffle is ready.  I leave the waffle in just a little bit longer after the light turns green the second time so the waffles are nice and crispy.  But if you like them less crunchy, by all means take them out earlier.

Cooking!

Ready!

Remove!

Serve smeared with butter and drizzled with syrup.  And your preferred beverages.   As you can see, this story has a very happy ending.

Enjoy!

Baked Christmas Ham

I am in Cairo, house hunting and baking ham!  We were invited to the home of a colleague for a lovely Christmas celebration yesterday and I promised to help another friend bake his ham to take along.  To that end, I hauled brown sugar, mustard, maraschino cherries, wooden toothpicks and canned pineapple slices with me from KL.  I am now informed that all of those things are available here but I wasn’t taking any chances!

Ingredients

1 whole ham (ours was 19.2 lbs or 8.89kg  and boneless– an enormous thing of beauty)

3 cans pineapple slices

1 jar maraschino cherries

2 cups or 400g  dark brown sugar

7 oz or about half of a small bottle of French’s mustard (207ml)

Bunch of wooden toothpicks

(If your ham is smaller, you might not need as much of the other ingredients.  Use your judgment.)

Method

Score the ham with a sharp knife.  I forgot to photograph this part but scoring the ham just means making very shallow cuts one way on the ham and then turning it to make shallow cuts the other way, ending up with a diamond or crisscross pattern on the skin of your ham.

Using toothpicks, secure the pineapple slices all over your ham.

Add one cherry in the center of each pineapple slice and hold it firm with another toothpick.

Mix your mustard and brown sugar.  Spread over the ham with a small spoon or pastry brush.   

Don’t put it too thick because you don’t want the sugar to burn as the ham cooks.  You won’t use the whole bowl initially, so set aside the balance for the last 30 minutes of cooking.

Add a couple of mugs full of water to the bottom of the baking pan so that the glaze that drips off does not burn black in the dry pan.  Check often throughout baking that the pan does not get dried out.  Keep adding water as needed.

Bake in a 350°F or 180°C oven around 10-12 minutes per pound.  Hams are already cooked but you want the internal temperature to reach between 130-140°F or 54-60°C before serving.

Halfway through baking, take the ham out of the oven and baste with the pan juices.

About 30 minutes before you think the ham will be done, take it out and add the balance of the brown sugar mustard mixture. 

When it is done, remove the pineapples and cherries and put them around your serving dish.  Slice the ham and put it in the middle.  

This was about one third of that huge ham.  We kept slicing and refilling the platter as needed. 

Enjoy!