Dark Chocolate Toasted Sesame Muffins #MuffinMonday

Toasted sesame seeds and toasted sesame seed oil boost and complement the dark chocolate roasted sesame Lindt bar in this fragrant chocolate muffin. Plus, look how pretty the sesame seeds look!

I have a small collection of chocolate bars that I have been amassing for a number of months because they come in such wonderful and unusual flavor combinations. Chocolate, of course, with orange, mint, sea salt, black currant, crunchy caramel, salted caramel, blueberry, passionfruit, cherry, chili, coconut, dark lemon and pepper, just to name a few! My master plan is to do a muffin series based on the chocolates. Doesn't that sounds like a fun idea? I finally got around to baking the first one today. And, before you ask, let me say that I have no affiliation with any of the chocolate makers and I have bought all the chocolates myself.

I was extremely pleased with this first batch, using Lindt Dark Chocolate Roasted Sesame and my usual Monday morning taste testers enjoyed them too.

Ingredients 

1/2 cup or 70g sesame seeds
2 cups or 250g flour
3/4 cup or 150g sugar
1/4 cup or 20g cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup or 240ml milk
1/4 cup or 60ml toasted pure sesame oil
1 Lindt dark chocolate and roasted sesame bar (3 1/2 oz or 100g)

Method
Toast your sesame seeds in a nonstick skillet over a medium flame. Stir or toss them often to keep them from scorching. This takes just a few minutes. Set them aside to cool.

Chop your chocolate bar with a knife and put aside a small handful for decorating the tops of the muffins.

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and either grease a 12-cup muffin tin or line it with paper muffin cups.

In a large bowl, stir together your flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt and half of the toasted sesame seeds. No need to measure. Just eyeball it.

In another smaller bowl, whisk together your eggs, milk, and toasted sesame oil.

The toasted sesame oil is a rich, golden brown.

Fold your wet ingredients into your dry ones.  Stop when there is still quite a bit of flour still unmixed.

Add in the larger pile of the chopped chocolate bar and stir again until the batter is just mixed.

Divide the batter between your prepared muffin cups.

Sprinkle on the remainder of the toasted sesame seeds then add a few little pieces of the reserved chocolate bar to each muffin.

Bake in the preheated oven for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick stuck in the middle comes out clean.

Allow to cool for a few minutes in the tin and then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

Enjoy!

The Candy Bar Series

2. Pecan Caramel Chocolate Muffins using Frey Pecan & Caramel

3. White Chocolate Lemon Muffins using Movenpick Swiss Chocolate White Lemon

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Beans on Buttery Marmite Toast Muffins #MuffinMonday

Heinz Beans baked in a buttery white flour muffin subtly spiked with Marmite makes a great breakfast, snack or dinner. Add a fried egg or two to complete the meal. And more baked beans on the side, if you'd like. 

Beans on toast is a classic British meal, served up morning, noon or night, whenever something easy, cheap, hot and delicious is needed. I am reliably informed that it’s a great hangover cure but I cannot verify that from personal experience. It is certainly a favorite childhood dish and is still eaten with relish by many a Brit, of every age. Some butter the toast, some add the Heinz beans directly. A third group will butter, spread Marmite and then heap on the beans. But, always, always, it’s meant to be made with Heinz beans in the blue tin.

Here, I give you, beans on toast, with Marmite, muffin-style. They got the "These are delicious!" stamp of approval from my Scottish mother-in-law.

Ingredients
2 1/2 cups or 315g flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup or 240ml milk
1/2 cup or 115g unsalted butter, melted then cooled
2 eggs
1 tablespoon Marmite, plus extra for garnish, if desired.
Generous 1/2 cup or 170g Heinz baked beans (Or Heinz Beanz as the blue can now reads)

Method
Preheat oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your 12-cup muffin pan by generously greasing with butter, oil or non-stick spray.

Combine flour, baking powder, sugar and salt together in a large mixing bowl.

In another bowl, whisk together milk, melted butter, Marmite and eggs.

Add all the milk mixture to flour mixture.

Gently fold just until dry ingredients are moistened.

Divide a little more than half your batter relatively evenly between the 12 muffin cups. Make a little well with your tomato sauce dipped tablespoon and add in a scant tablespoon of Heinz Baked Beans.

Top with the remaining batter.

Add a few baked beans and a drizzle of the tomato sauce to the top.

Depending on your crowd, another little drizzle of Marmite can also be added. I wasn’t sure who would go for it so I did a few with extra Marmite and the rest without. Folks can always add more once they are baked as well.

Bake 20-25 minutes or until muffins are golden.

Remove from oven and let cool for a few minutes before removing muffins from the pan.

Enjoy!

Cream Cheese Banana Pecan Muffins #MuffinMonday

Sweet ripe bananas and soft cream cheese combine to make the best muffins! Add in a goodly number of toasted pecans and these are the perfect breakfast or snack. 

If you’ve ever had a look at my blog roll in the left hand column (assuming you aren’t on a mobile device, and then I don’t know where it goes!) you’ve likely noticed one link called Kelli’s Kitchen. That’s my friend, Kelli’s blog. She was blessed with a grandmother who loved to cook and bake and who was delighted to have little hands helping her in the kitchen as she concocted her culinary magic. Kelli often shares her Nana’s best-loved recipes but just last week, she published one for an Old-Fashioned Cream Cheese Banana Nut Bread that she adapted from Southern Living Magazine. I love that Southern Living tried to make the banana nut bread healthier, using some whole wheat and reduced fat cream cheese, but Kelli did Kelli and made it more delicious. Even as I read her post, I knew that I would have to recreate that old-fashioned banana bread in muffin form.

Those sweet bananas and cream cheese may sounds like an unusual combination, but let me assure you that they are divine together. This may be my favorite sweet muffin so far in all my years of Muffin Monday.

Ingredients
1 1/2 cup or 190g flour
3/4 cup or 150g sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 medium-sized bananas (Peeled, mine weighed a little more than 8oz or 230g together)
4 oz or 115g cream cheese, softened
1 large egg
1/3 cup or 75g butter, melted then cooled
1/4 cup or 60ml milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups or 140g pecans, toasted

Method
Preheat oven to 350°F or 180°C.  Fill the muffin pan with liners or grease it really well with butter or non-stick spray. In case you are coveting them, my pretty liners were a gift from my elder daughter. They came from Crate & Barrel.

Measure your flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt into a large mixing bowl and give them a good stir to mix.

In a medium-sized mixing bowl, mash your bananas and softened cream cheese together with fork.

Add in the egg, butter, milk and vanilla and mix well.

Complete the batter by pouring the liquid ingredients into the dry ones and fold until they are just combined. You should still see a lot of dry flour.

Chop your pecans roughly and put aside a generous handful for topping. Fold the rest of the pecans into the batter.

Divide the batter evenly between the muffin cups.

Sprinkle the tops with the reserved chopped pecans.

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

Allow to cool for a few minutes in the muffin pan and then remove to a rack to cool completely.

Enjoy!

Christmas Stocking Candy Muffins #MuffinMonday

These muffins are the perfect use for the Christmas stocking candy you’ve got hanging around and subverting your vows to make better food choices in the New Year. Now you can eat candy with impunity and call it breakfast. Let’s just pretend you don’t already. :)

When I was growing up, Santa came and filled our stockings on New Year’s Eve. I have no idea how my parents got us to believe that Santa came by twice, but that was the way it was. I was a trusting child. What a stocking on New Year’s Eve meant was children with candy and little toys to keep them quiet on New Year’s Day, I’m guessing, when the grownups were no doubt wanting to sleep in and sleep off the late night bubbly. In my husband’s family, Father Christmas left your stocking on the foot of your bed as you slept on Christmas Eve. Children were supposed to wake up on Christmas Day and explore the stockings before coming in to disturb their parents. Same objective, different days. For our girls, we went with option 2.

When they were little, I tried to balance the candy out with more little toys but as they’ve gotten older, there seems to be more candy than stuff. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, until they leave and I’ve got a great big bowl of Christmas stocking candy leftovers. Why do they not take it with them? Excellent question and one I cannot answer for you. I’ve been giving it away right and left. But there is STILL candy in the bowl, so something had to be done. And that something is muffins.

By all means, keep your favorites out. You will notice that there is not a single Butterfinger in there, for instance, although Butterfingers would be superb chopped up in a muffin. And that is because I have already eaten them all. Those are my favorites and they go first. Chop the rest up and let’s make muffins!

A small selection of leftovers

Ingredients
2 cups or 250g flour
3/4 cup or 150g sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup or 240ml milk
1/2 cup or 120ml canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 large eggs
1 generous cup, roughly chopped, or about 200g random leftover Christmas stocking candy

Method
Preheat oven to 350°F or 180°C and generously grease cups of your 12-cup muffin pan or line them with paper liners.

Mix flour, sugar, baking powder and salt together in a large mixing bowl.

Whisk together milk, oil, vanilla and eggs in another smaller bowl.

Add all the milk/egg mixture to the dry ingredients.

Gently fold until dry ingredients are just moistened.  Now fold in your chopped candy.

Divide your batter evenly between the 12 muffin cups in your prepared pan.  Bake for 20-25 minutes in your preheated oven or until the muffins are golden.

Remove from oven and let cool for a few minutes before removing the muffins from the pan. Cool completely on a wire rack.

Enjoy!

Empty stockings but full muffins!

When does Santa come, if at all, to your house? Do you have a favorite candy that you hope for or hoard around Christmas time?

Ham and Scalloped Potato Muffins #MuffinMonday

A scalloped potato casserole-inspired muffin, with sliced potatoes, lots of cheese, cream and smoked ham. Perfect for breakfast, snack or even lunch. 

For the last couple of weeks our house has been a bustle of creativity and laughter, both in and out of the kitchen. Favorite dishes were cooked, touristy places were visited, a gingerbread mosque was baked and erected, many a cocktail was imbibed and a thousand backgammon games were played amongst the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree and our ancient rag-tag manger scene, which includes such witnesses to the Miracle Birth as a headless wise man, a longhorn and a small rhinoceros, along with the usual shepherds, cows and sheep.

Now the busy bathrooms and crazy kitchen are empty. The forlorn tree, stripped naked of its finery but for the occasional missed wisp of golden tinsel, has trailed fallen needles all the way to the curb of rejection. The dog circles just me now, every hopeful. And the baby Jesus and his eclectic entourage are back in the doll stroller box from Christmas circa 1995, which is their home for 50 weeks of the year.

I look around at the now reassembled living room, furniture back in its accustomed places and I am working on being grateful rather than sad. As much as it would give me joy to keep our daughters with us always, I am grateful that they are exceptionally capable of looking after themselves and are avidly pursuing their dreams.

Trying to look on all the bright sides of this situation, another bonus is that I can cook and bake exactly what pleases me. Last week a post from a friend and fellow blogger Kelli from Kelli’s Kitchen arrived in my email inbox with a recipe for one of my favorite casseroles, scalloped potatoes. Her version is a family favorite, cheesy and creamy but with the welcome addition of ham. If that divine top baked to a golden crunch doesn’t sell you, the tender, cheesy potatoes inside should do the trick. Do go have a look. My thoughts turned, as they do, to the possibility of a ham and scalloped potato muffin but I figured it wouldn’t be very popular with the sweet muffin crowd in residence. So I waited a week. (As it turns out, most of them didn't buy the PR for dried plums vs. prunes anyway. Hey, I tried.)

Totally worth the wait. These guys are delicious. All potato-y and cheesy and that ham? The perfect addition, for sure.

A good savory muffin is great consolation. And you can be sure I have saved some ham to make the original casserole as well.

Ingredients
6 oz or 170g smallish new potatoes
2 cups or 250g flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon mustard powder
2 eggs
3/4 cup or 180ml milk
1/2 cup or 120ml whipping cream
1/4 cup butter or 60g, melted and cooled
7 oz or 200g extra sharp cheddar, grated
2 1/3 oz or 65g Parmesan, grated
1 cup or 150g baked smoked ham, chopped

Method
Put a pot of water on to boil with a teaspoon or so of salt, as you would to boil pasta. Fill a bowl with cold water and a few ice cubes and set it aside.

Slice your potatoes and pop them in the boiling water.

Cook for about 4-5 minutes, until they are just done. Pour the cooked potato slices into a colander and drain. Transfer them to the bowl of ice water till cool.

Return them to the colander to drain again.

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your 12-cup muffin pan by greasing it liberally with oil or non-stick cooking spray.

Combine your flour, baking powder, salt and mustard powder in a large mixing bowl.

Set aside 6 slices of the cooked potato and a couple of small handfuls each of the cheddar, ham and Parmesan for topping the muffins before baking.

Just a little pile of each for topping.

Add the rest of the cheddar into the dry ingredient bowl and stir.

Now add the rest of the sliced potatoes into that bowl. Use a spoon to break the slices into pieces as you stir to combine. Finally, mix in the Parmesan and the ham.

In another smaller bowl, whisk together your eggs, milk, cream and cooled butter.

Fold the wet ingredients into the dry ones and stop when they are just combined.

Divide your batter between the 12 greased muffins cups.

Top with reserved Parmesan cheese and ham pieces. Cut your potato slices in half and insert one half slice of potato into the batter in each cup.

Now try to get some reserved cheddar cheese to sit on top and around each potato slice. We aren’t looking for perfect here. Just some cheese on the potato.

Bake for 25-30 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Remove the muffins from the oven and allow to cool for a few minutes in the pan and then remove to continue cooling on a wire rack.

Since the cheese melts out a little while baking, you may have to run a knife around the outside to remove them, depending on how well you greased the pan.

Enjoy!