Lime, White Chocolate and Coconut Muffins

These muffins are really irresistible; they're fragrant and very refreshing with a subtle taste of coconut and intense sweetness of white chocolate cut by the tart flavor of lime. The coconut provides a nice contrasting structure to the melting white chocolate, while the lime flesh gives the muffins some extra moistness. All these together make a delightful combination of textures and flavors. The recipe for these has been adapted from Grab Your Fork food blog. The original version can be found here. Enjoy!!!

Notes to the recipe: Malibu can be substituted with another coconut liquour.

Lime, White Chocolate and Coconut Muffins

150g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
40g caster sugar
100g white chocolate, chopped roughly
1/2 cup desiccated coconut

1 egg
100ml milk
2 tbsp Malibu
50g butter melted and cooled slightly
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 lime

1. Preheat the oven to 200 C (390 F).
2. Grease or line 12 muffin cups.
3. Grate the zest of the lime and set aside.
4. Cut the outer pith from the lime and then carefully slide the knife under one membrane and gently remove a segment of lime flesh. Continue until all lime flesh has been extracted into a bowl for later use.
5. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a large bowl. Stir in the sugar, coconut, and white chocolate. Make a well in the centre.
6. In a separate large mixing bowl, mix together the egg, milk, vanilla and Malibu. Stir in lime flesh and rind.
7. Pour the egg mixture and melted butter into the well. Mix quickly just until the ingredients are combined, taking no more than 15 seconds as over-mixing will prevent them rising.
8. Spoon into the muffin pan filling ¾ full.
9. Bake for 20 minutes .

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Recipe In Polish:
Muffinki limonkowo-kokosowe z białą czekoladą

Taste & Create

I’ve discovered this delicious salad recipe thanks to Nicole from For the Love of Food blog. Nicole has been hosting a food blog event Taste and Create, in which participants are paired together to try out a recipe from each other's blogs. Nicole has paired me with Johnny from Le Petit Kitchen blog. The blog was created only a month ago, so there weren't many recipes to choose. What’s made the choice even harder is that in most of the recipes there are no exact quantities of ingredients given. I’ve opted for salad as this is the kind of recipe in which you don’t really need exact quantities. Besides, making more salads was one of my New Year’s resolutions this year. Since I haven’t posted even one salad recipe on my blog yet, I thought this food blog event is just a perfect opportunity to start making some. The salad came out really delicious, light and very refreshing. I was actually surprised how well all the different flavors blended together. I’ll definitely make it again :)

Notes to the recipe: The original recipe (which can be found here) asked for blood oranges, but I used mandarin oranges instead; I also omitted the dill and used less lemon juice for the vinaigrette.

Californian Salad with Fruit and Goat Cheese

lettuce
pear
mandarin orange
goat cheese
pistachios, roughly chopped

balsamic vinegar

FOR THE VINAIGRETTE*
lemon juice
olive oil
dill (optional)

1. Heat the balsamic vinegar in a small saucepan over low heat until thick . Remove from the heat and let cool.
2. Tear the lettuce into small pieces. Cut the pears and oranges, crumble the goat cheese.
3. To make the vinaigrette mix olive oil with lemon juice and dill.
4. Place the pears, oranges, crumbled goat cheese, and lettuce in a big bowl and toss gently.
5. Transfer the salad to plates, drizzle with some of the vinaigrette and balsamic vinegar.
6. Garnish with pistachios. Serve.

* I made vinaigreette using 1 part of oil to 4 parts of lemon.

Przepis po polsku:
Sałatka kalifornijska z owocami i kozim serem

Raspberry Streusel Muffins

The first time I made these delicious muffins was in Canada last summer. In Canada there are raspberry fields where you can go with your own basket and pick up as many raspberries as you want. Then the raspberries you've picked up are weighted and you pay for them. Picking up raspberries this way is much cheaper than buying them in a grocery store and so much more fun. Both I and my husband love raspberries, so we loved to go to pick up raspberries together and try new raspberry recipes after. Some of our favorite recipes were Grilled Salmon with Raspberry Sauce, Raspberry and White Chocolate Tart (delicious, but rather expensive if you buy raspberries in a grocery store), and these lovely muffins. I made them again last week with frozen raspberries and streusel topping with cardamom and the result was absolutely awesome!!! The sweet and spicy flavor of the streusel topping is just a perfect complement to the moist and fruity muffins. The idea of using cardamon in raspberry muffins comes from Dagmar from A Cat In the Kitchen food blog who also made raspberry and cardamon muffins with crumbles a few weeks ago. The recipe for my muffins comes from one of the cookbooks from Le cordon Bleu series published by Könemann. The only thing I’ve changed was the streusel topping; the original one was made without oat meal and spices.

Notes to the recipe: You can use either fresh or frozen raspberries in this recipe. If you use frozen raspberries, do not thaw them as they will color the batter pink. If you don't have raspberries, I suspect the muffins would also be delicious with bluberries, bilberries, or strawberries.

RASPBERRY STREUSEL MUFFINS

FOR THE MUFFINS:
375 g flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
pinch of salt
115 g brown sugar
150 g raspberries (fresh or frozen)
2 eggs
250 ml (2 cups) milk
125 g butter, melted

FOR THE STREUSEL TOPPING:
50 g butter, melted
50 g flour
50 g rolled oats
50 g brown sugar
½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon cardamon

1. Heat the oven to 210 C (410 F). Grease or line 12 muffin cups.
2. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a large bowl. Add the sugar and raspberries and stir. Make a well in the centre.
3. In a small jug beat lightly eggs and milk.
4. Pour the egg mixture and melted butter into the well. Mix gently with a metal spoon just until the ingredients are combined. Do not overmix, the batter should be lumpy .
5. Spoon into the muffin pan filling ¾ full.
6. To make streusel topping, combine oat, brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, and cardamon in a small bowl. Pour in hot melted butter; stir to combine into crumbs. Sprinkle mixture evenly over top of each muffin.
7. Bake the muffins for 30 minutes or until a tooth pick comes out clean. Cool in pan 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack.

Przepis po polsku:

Malinowe mufinki z kruszonką

Banana and Orange Muffins

I woke up at 6:00 a.m. today morning when my husband was still asleep. I wanted to surprise him with nice breakfast in bed, so I baked him these delicious muffins. Personally, I never eat muffins that early in the morning, but my Canadian husband is much more used to having sweet breakfasts than me, so banana muffins made perfect breakfast for him.

The recipe I used was actually a recipe for banana bread, but I got a wonderful muffin pan for Christmas and really couldn't wait to try it. So I decided to turn the bread recipe into muffins. The bread was originally made with lots of nuts and cranberries, but I wanted my muffins plain, so I omitted them completely. I also reduced the amounts of oil and sugar. The result was wonderful!!! My husband said they were the best muffins he had ever had in his life! I tried some later in the afternoon and I have to admit they’re really really delicious, extremely moist and very aromatic!!! Their wonderful warm banana and orange smell fills the entire house.

Banana and Orange Muffins
(adapted from What's Cooking Baking cookbook)

DRY INGREDIENTS:
175 g all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
125 g brown sugar
2 ripe bananas, mashed
zest of one orange, grated

WET INGREDIENTS:
5-6 tbsp orange juice, freshly squeezed
2 eggs, lightly beaten
125 ml sunflower oil

1. Preheat oven to 180 C (350 F). Line a muffin pan with paper baking cups, you'll need ten of them.
2. Sift flour and baking powder into a large bowl. Add brown sugar and orange peel. Mix well. Fold in mashed bananas.
3. In a separate bowl, combine wet ingredients. Mix well.
4. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and stir until just mixed and moistened. Do not over mix.
5. Fill each muffin cup to 3/4 full.
6. Bake 30 minutes or until golden brown.
7. Cool 5 min. and then remove from pans.

Przepis po polsku:
Mufinki bananowo-pomarańczowe

Autumn Muffins

I’ve decided to call this recipe Autumn Muffins for two reasons. First, the combination of pears, nuts, and spices makes them very fragrant and indeed perfect for autumn (especially if you I serve them warm with a drizzle of maple syrup on a cold day). Second, I couldn’t really use the original name of Pear and Pecan Muffins as I didn’t add any Pecans to them. Pecans are usually expensive and hard to find here and since I’ve had lots of walnuts at home, I thought they would make a nice substitute. And, honestly, I don’t like Pecans much anyway.

The original recipe for these tasty muffins comes from a book titled Muffins, which is one of the cookbooks from Le cordon Bleu series published by Könemann. I have already tried several recipes from it, and they all turned out great, so I really recommend it.

A few notes to the recipe:
1. I used freshly grated nutmeg instead of powdered one - it made the muffins even more fragrant and thus more delicious!!!
2. I didn’t have vanilla extract (I think it’s impossible to obtain in Poland), so I added a packet of vanilla sugar to the dry ingredients.

And, one more thing, it’s important you roast the nuts before adding them to the batter. They'll become very very crunchy and will contrast well to the soft, delicate, and moist pears later.

Autumn Muffins
(adapted from Le Cordon Bleu: Muffins)

450 g all-purpose flour
2 ½ teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
115 g brown sugar
1 packet vanilla sugar (or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract)
400 g pears, peeled and chopped
100 g walnuts (or pecans), roasted and chopped*
2 eggs
375 ml milk
125 g butter, melted

Preheat oven to 210°C (410F)

Sift together flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg; Add brown sugar, vanilla sugar (if you use vanilla extract add it later to the liquid ingredients), pears and nuts.

Whisk the milk and eggs together. Add them to the dry ingredients. Add the butter and stir until just combined. Do not over mix the batter;

Fill prepared muffin pan ¾ full. Bake 30 minutes, or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Leave the muffins in cups for 5 minutes. Then let them cool on a wire rack.

* roast the nuts for 5-7 minutes in the oven preheated to 180°C(350F)

Przepis po polsku:
Jesienne mufinki