Sweet Potato Muffins & Jamie Oliver



As I mentioned in my last post, it feels like I'm trying to get back into baking and breadmaking. For me, it's an odd thing to say since I've been baking and breadmaking since I was sixteen. As my previous posts have shown, our multiple moves last year played havoc with my daily kitchen fix.  While in reality, I'm actually baking a good bit. I'm busy making multiple batches of scones, biscuits, muffins and foccacia to fuel our two teenagers, who are working their way out of their current shoe size.

All of the hassle, the packing, the storage, the temporary apartment, and finally moving has truly been worth it. We're living closer to our families now, than we have in the past 20 years. At that time, we were living in Wichita and it wasn't that far to come to Houston. Years later, when work moved us from Washington, D.C. to New York, it turned out to be quite the journey. Our youngest was a toddler when we moved to New York and she didn't believe that a kid's car seat was anything anyone should sit in for any length of time. I think I've sustained some hearing loss from that period in our lives.

Recently, I was at our branch of the Houston Public Library and I came across a copy of Jamie Oliver's book, Jamie at Home: Cook Your Way To The Good Life.  The book is gorgeous with many inspiring photos of his garden and the food he makes from his crops. One of the photographs that caught my attention was for Butternut Squash Muffins with a Frosty Top. This muffin is the type that my teens love. They quickly gravitate towards these when they are hunting through the kitchen for something satisfying and filling to eat. I tweaked Jamie's recipe a little by reducing the amount of sugar since I was using sweet potatoes and by topping them with a light citrus gel.

If you'd like to see this recipe in metric, click here.

Enjoy!

Jamie's Muffins

3 whole sweet potatoes, baked, peeled, mashed
4 large eggs, whisked
1 tsp sea salt
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 1/4 cup cane sugar
1 cup brown rice flour
1/2 cup oat flour (you can also use millet, corn, sorghum, etc)
1/2 cup sweet rice flour (you may also use tapioca, corn or potato starch)
1/2 cup arrowroot starch (you may also use one of the other starches)
1 tsp chia seed meal or 1 tsp xanthan/guar gum
Optional: 1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts

Gel

1/4 cup orange juice
1/4 tsp vanilla flavoring
2 tsp agar agar powder (you may use gelatin)
2 - 3 Tb cane sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and place about 15 to 18 silicone muffin cups on it. You can also use parchment paper lined muffin tins as well. In a medium bowl, add the liquid ingredients, including the mashed sweet potatoes and blend. In a large bowl, combine all the dry ingredients and throughly combine. Slowly, add the liquid ingredients and quickly blend together. Spoon the batter into the muffin cups and bake for 25 to 30 minutes. Allow to cool a little bit before topping with the citrus gel and zest.

In a small saucepan, combine the orange juice, sugar and agar agar or gelatin powder. Cook until the mixture begins to thicken, then add the vanilla flavoring. Remove from the heat and pour into a bowl for serving.

Spiced Applesauce Muffins

We have had new dietary challenges at our house recently. We have discovered some new allergies for our daughter and it has required some new changes in the foods she eats. When she's not feeling her best, one of her favorite comfort foods is applesauce with a touch of cinnamon.

I was trying to lift her spirits the other day and I wanted to make her something that wouldn't bother her tummy. I located a delicious recipe for applesauce spice muffins from Epicurious.com that had the potential to do it. I tweaked the recipe a little and made it gluten free. If you would like to make your own applesauce you could try one from ExPat Chef at the blog, the Eat Local Challenge.

As a family, we are not alone in our love of apples. Apples were commonly used at least as far back as classical times with Apicius and were in cookbooks in medieval times in recipes for drinks, rissoles, apple sauce and fritters. (Oxford Companion to Food, Davidson, 1999, pg. 30-31)

The only apple native to America is the crab apple, a small and sour little fruit. When the colonists came to American they brought the things they were familiar with such as their apple seeds. The first orchards didn't bear much fruit due to the lack of honey bees, but that was soon remedied by the colonists in 1622 when the first shipment arrived in the Colony of Virginia. Now there are 10,000 different varieties of apples grown in the world with 7,000 of them grown in the United States.

Several years ago for a science project, my children collected as many apple varieties as they could find. Next they noted the variety, tasted them, collected and counted seeds, and sprouted the seeds. Last they charted their results and showed off their apple seedlings. We had a blast searching out apple varieties and tasting them all. Since then we've made an effort to try any apple that we don't recognize and my daughter has had a real soft spot for anything made from apples.

After the muffins came out of the oven and cooled, my family lined up to try out the muffins. Richly flavored with spices and apples with a sweet crispy top, the muffins were intensely satisfying. My crew decided that these muffins needed to be regulars at our house. My daughter thought they were a wonderful way to end her day after having felt so unwell.

Recipe

Muffins

½ cup brown rice flour
½ cup arrowroot starch
¼ cup sweet rice flour
¼ cup chestnut flour
2 tsp psyllium (plantago) seed meal
½ tsp baking soda
1 ½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground allspice
¼ tsp ground nutmeg
¼ tsp sea salt
2 large eggs, beaten
¾ cup light brown sugar
2 Tb Turbinado sugar
1/2 cup vegetable shortening, melted
1 cup unsweetened applesauce
½ cup chopped pecans

Topping

2 Tb cane sugar
¼ tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp ground nutmeg

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Place 12 silicone muffin cups on a cookie sheet.

2. Pour the flours, seed meal, baking soda, baking powder, spices and sea salt into a medium bowl. Stir the dry ingredients together.

3. In a large bowl, dump in the eggs and sugar. Stir together and then pour in the melted butter, a small amount at a time. Blend until the mixture is creamy. Plop in the apple sauce and stir again.

4. Slowly combine the dry ingredients into the liquid ingredients until the flour mixture is mostly combined. Dump the nuts into the mixture and blend.

5. Fill each muffin cup with batter and then start the topping.

6. Pour the ingredients of the topping into a small bowl and stir together. Sprinkle the topping over the top of the muffins.

7. Bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 25 minutes. Allow to cool before serving.