Orange Chocolate Chip Muffins #MuffinMonday

These delightful orange chocolate chip muffins are fluffy and not overly sweet. They make the perfect snack with a cup of tea or cold glass of milk. 

Can you believe it?! I’ve been doing some form of Muffin Monday for more than 10 years now and for the first three years, I posted a muffin recipe every week. That’s something like 240 muffin recipes. You’d think that I’d have run out of flavor combinations but you would be wrong! 

While I have made muffins with chocolate and orange before, they were a chocolate muffin with orange marmalade added so they were much richer and kind of taste like Christmas, well, British Christmas. These are much lighter! 

Orange Chocolate Chip Muffins

I used semi-sweet chocolate chips for these muffins but you could substitute milk chocolate or dark chocolate, if you prefer. 

Ingredients for 12 muffins

2/3 cup or 130g sugar

Zest of 2 mandarin oranges

2 cups or 250g flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt 

2 eggs

1/2 cup or 120ml milk

1/3 cup or 80ml canola or other light oil

Juice of 2 mandarin oranges (about 1/4 cup or 60ml)

1/2 cup or 90g semi-sweet chocolate chips, plus a few extra for topping, if desired

Method

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your 12-cup muffin pan by spraying with non-stick spray or lining it with muffin papers.

Measure your sugar into a bowl and zest the mandarin oranges into it. Use the back of a spoon to press down on the zest and mix it in with the sugar, releasing the flavor and oil till the sugar is a pale yellow and whole bowl smells of bright citrusy sunshine. Go ahead, take a big sniff. It's glorious! 

Whisk together your flour, orange sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large mixing bowl. 

Add the chocolate chips to the flour/sugar mixture. I usually mix mine in with my clean hands so that I can separate any chocolate chips that are stuck together. 

In another smaller bowl, whisk together your eggs, oil, milk and orange juice.

Fold the wet ingredients into the dry ones and stir until just mixed, with a little flour still showing. 

Divide your batter between the 12 muffin cups. Top with the extra chocolate chips, if desired. 

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Allow to cool for a few minutes in the pans and then remove to continue cooling on a wire rack.

Enjoy!

As mentioned above, it’s Muffin Monday! Check out the list of tasty muffins my friends are sharing with you today below. 

• Greek Lemon Yogurt Muffins from Palatable Pastime
• Lemon Zucchini Muffins from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Orange Chocolate Chip Muffins from Food Lust People Love
• Pumpkin Zucchini Chocolate Chip Muffins from Jolene's Recipe Journal
• Whole Wheat Fig and Honey Muffins from Magical Ingredients

#MuffinMonday is a group of muffin loving bakers who get together once a month to bake muffins. You can see all of our lovely muffins by following our Pinterest board. Updated links for all of our past events and more information about Muffin Monday can be found on our home page.

Pin these Orange Chocolate Chip Muffins!

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Sourdough Sweet Carrot Mini Muffins #MuffinMonday

These sourdough sweet carrot mini muffins are tender and delightful with a cinnamon sugar topping. They disappear in record time. Bake some today!

If you’ve been reading along here for a number of years, you might remember that my younger daughter’s favorite birthday cake is our friend Jacky’s divine carrot cake. Unlike many carrot cake recipes, it does not start with grated carrots but cooked mashed ones. The result is a tender crumb that has won over even professed carrot haters. 

When I decided to bake sourdough carrot muffins for this month’s Muffin Monday, I knew that cooked, mashed carrots were going to be featured but if you google carrot muffins, as I did, every single one that turned up had grated carrot. 

It suddenly occurred to me that my search was faulty. What I really needed was a squash or pumpkin muffin recipe so I could replace them with cooked carrot. And so I did. 

Sourdough Sweet Carrot Mini Muffins

This recipe is adapted from a pumpkin muffin recipe on Lynn’s Way of Life. You can bake these as 12 normal sized muffins but I just love the way that the mini ones disappear in my house. I mean, really, who doesn’t have room for a mini muffin? So tiny, so good. 

Ingredients for 24 mini muffins

For the muffin batter:

8 oz or 227g fresh carrots

1 cup or 125g all purpose flour

1/3 cup, firmly packed, or 66g brown sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon 

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 egg

1/4 cup or 60ml canola or other light oil, plus extra for the pan, if necessary

1/4 cup or 57g sourdough discard

For the cinnamon sugar topping:

2 tablespoons, firmly packed, or 32g brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Method

Trim the ends off of your carrots and peel them. Cut them into short lengths.

Boil the carrots in a small pot of water until tender, about 8-10 minutes. Drain the carrots and mash them with a potato masher or fork. I like to use a fork because it results in a finer mash than my potato masher. 

Put the mashed carrots in a mixing bowl to cool. 

Preheat oven to 350°F or 180°C. Prepare your 24-cup mini muffin pan (or 12-cup regular muffin pan) by greasing it or lining it with paper liners.

Add the egg, sourdough starter, and oil to the cooled carrot bowl. Whisk to combine.

In another mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredient bowl and fold until just combined. 

Divide the mixture into the cups in your prepared muffin pan.  I like to use a small cookie dough scoop. 

To make the cinnamon sugar topping, mix together brown sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle the mixture over the muffins. 

Bake for about 14 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the muffin comes out clean.

Enjoy! 

It’s Muffin Monday, the last Monday of every month where we share delicious muffin recipes! Check them out below. 

• Blueberry Granola Whole Wheat Muffins from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Cashew Yogurt and Potato Muffins from Magical Ingredients
• Mini Chocolate Chip Muffins from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Pineapple Upside Down Muffins from Jolene's Recipe Journal
• Sourdough Sweet Carrot Mini Muffins from Food Lust People Love

#MuffinMonday is a group of muffin loving bakers who get together once a month to bake muffins. You can see all of our lovely muffins by following our Pinterest board. Updated links for all of our past events and more information about Muffin Monday can be found on our home page.

Pin these Sourdough Sweet Carrot Mini Muffins!

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Verry Cherry Plum Mini Muffins #MuffinMonday

These Verry Cherry Plum Mini Muffins are made with hybrid fruit, part cherry-part plum and they are a delicious mixture of both!

A couple of weeks ago, I was at my local grocery store and I came across a display of Verry Cherry Plums and was intrigued. The price was $1.99 a pound and, even better, another sign said if you bought more than one pound, you got a discount of $2.   What? 

I stood there for a few minutes contemplating and calculating when another shopper approached the display. I could see her brain working on the math problem as well so I said, “Are we reading this right and if we buy more than one pound, that first pound is essentially free?” We agreed that we were and went off happily in our separate directions with each a bag of Verry Cherry Plums in our carts.

It’s always exciting to have a new ingredient to try and I am pleased to tell you that that cherry plums are lovely. Crunchier than a plum so more like a cherry in texture but definitely with a plummy flavor mixed in with cherry. And most of the bag were super sweet. Almost too sweet, if that’s even possible in fruit. 

According to the website, the season is now and it’s short so if you see them in your local store, snap them up. A little more research reveals that there are other name brands for these little hybrid fruit and also some naturally occurring cherry plums that are not manipulated hybrids. (These aren't genetically modified, by the way.) How I’ve never come across them before, I do not know! Am I the last to discover them or have you tried cherry plums before?

Verry Cherry Plum Mini Muffins

If you don’t have cherry plums, please substitute normal plums or cherries for these muffins. Or really any soft fruit to be honest. 

Ingredients for 24 mini muffins

1 cup or 125g flour

1/4 cup or 50g sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup or 100g chopped Verry Cherry Plums, plus extra for decoration, if desired 

1 egg

1/4 cup or 75g Greek yogurt

1/4 cup or 60ml milk

2 tablespoons canola or other light oil 

To give you an idea of their size, here are a few cherry plums with a normal cherry. 

Method

Preheat oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your mini muffin pan by lining them with little paper muffin cups or greasing the inside with butter or oil. I only had 12 little paper liners so I did half and half. 

In large bowl whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add in the chopped cherry plums and stir to coat them with the dry ingredients.

In smaller bowl, whisk together the egg, yogurt, milk and oil.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredient and fold until just combined. 

Divide the batter between your mini muffin cups. Add some chopped cherry plums to each muffin for decoration, if desired. 

Bake in the preheated oven about 13-16 minutes or until the muffins are browned and a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Leave them to cool for a few minutes then remove them from the pan and cool on a wire rack. 

Enjoy!

As almost always with Muffin Monday, we don’t have a theme so our bakers make whatever inspires them each month. We hope some of them will inspire you to bake! 

• Easy Spiced Peach Muffins from Zesty South Indian Kitchen
• Hatch Green Chile Corn Muffins from Palatable Pastime
• Mango Lassi Muffins from Magical Ingredients
• Verry Cherry Plum Mini Muffins from Food Lust People Love

 

#MuffinMonday is a group of muffin loving bakers who get together once a month to bake muffins. You can see all of our lovely muffins by following our Pinterest board. Updated links for all of our past events and more information about Muffin Monday can be found on our home page.

Pin these Very Cherry Plum Mini Muffins!

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Rum Raisin Banana Muffins #MuffinMonday

An adult-only snack with a taste of the Caribbean, these rum raisin banana muffins are a tasty celebration of summer, sun and a beach holiday down the islands.

When I was little we lived for three years on the island of Trinidad, not far off the coast of Venezuela in the Caribbean Sea. On holiday weekends, it was a treat to be invited to go “down de islands” to stay with friends who had holiday homes there. “De islands” are the Bocas Islands which lie between Trinidad and Venezuela in a series of straits called the Bocas del Dragón or Dragon’s Mouth.

I remember those holidays as care- and mostly clothes-free. The houses were fairly basic and everything you were going to eat or drink had to be brought with you by boat. But down de islands, everyone was in a party mood and rum punch flowed freely for the adult crowd.

A favorite dessert in those days was homemade rum raisin ice cream. Even children were allowed to eat it! It’s a great flavor combination and banana is a welcome addition.

Rum Raisin Banana Muffins

Make these adult-only muffins child-friendly by replacing the rum with apple or your favorite natural juice.

Ingredients
3/4 cup or 115g seedless raisins
1/3 cup or 78ml golden rum
2 cups or 250g plain flour
3/4 cup or 150g sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 ripe banana
1/2 cup or 120ml milk
1/4 cup or 60ml canola or other light oil
1 large egg

Method
Soak the raisins in the rum, turning them with a spoon occasionally so the top ones also have a chance of soaking up some rum. I find that this goes faster if you warm the raisins and rum. Either way, set the bowl aside until the raisins have plumped up a little. Not all of the rum will be absorbed.

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare a 12-cup muffin pan by lining it with paper muffin cups.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In another smaller bowl, mash the banana with a fork. Add in the milk, oil and egg and whisk to combine.

Drain any unabsorbed rum into the bowl and whisk again.

Tip the drained raisins into the flour bowl and stir to coat them.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredient bowl and fold together until just combined.

Divide the batter between the 12 muffin cups.

Bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes or until the tops are golden and a wooden toothpick comes out clean.

Leave to cool for a few minutes in the pan then remove to a wire cooling rack to cool completely.

Enjoy!

Check out the other lovely muffins my Muffin Monday group is sharing today!

• Apple Cinnamon Muffins from Palatable Pastime
• Blueberry Muffins with Blueberry Jam & Lemon Sugar Topping from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Chocolate Chip Sourdough Muffins from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Rum Raisin Banana Muffins from Food Lust People Love

#MuffinMonday is a group of muffin loving bakers who get together once a month to bake muffins. You can see all of our lovely muffins by following our Pinterest board. Updated links for all of our past events and more information about Muffin Monday can be found on our home page.

Pin these Rum Raisin Banana Muffins! 

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