Nigella's Christmas Morning Muffins Recipe

[tulpe]

For Monkeysmama and anyone else who wants it

Makes 12
250g plain flour
2 and-a-half teaspoons baking powder
Half teaspoon bicarb of soda
100g caster sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
good grating of fresh nutmeg or quarter teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 clementines/satsumas
approx 125ml full fat milk
75ml vegetable oil (or melted butter left to cool slightly)
1 egg
175g dried cranberries

For the Topping:
3 teaspoons demerara sugar

1. Preheat oven to 200/GM6. Line a 12 bun muffin tin with muffin papers

1. Measure the flour, baking powder, bicarb, caster sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg into a large bowl. Grate the zest of the clementines/satsumas over and combine. If you are doing this in advance, leave the zesting until Christmas morning.

1. Squeeze the juice of the clementines/satsumas into a measuring jug and pour in the milk until it comes up to the 200ml mark

1. Add the oil (or slightly cooled melted butter) and egg and lightly beat until just combined

1. Pour this liquid mixture into the bowl of dried ingredients and stir until everything is more or less combined, remembering that a well-beaten mixture makes for heavy muffins: in other words a lumpy batter is a good thing here.

1. Fold in the cranberries then spoon the batter into muffin cases and sprinkle the demerara sugar on top.

1. Bake in oven for 20 minutes. Eat either plain or broken and smeared with unsalted butter and marmalade.

Make ahead tip: Bake the muffins up to 3 days ahead. Cool and pack in an airtight container between layers of parchment paper. Pop into warm oven for 5 minutes before serving.

Freeze ahead tip: make and freeze the muffins in a rigid container for up to 3 months. Thaw at room temp. Pop into warm oven for 5 mins before serving.

NB: I used olive oil instead of vegetable oil or butter. I also had ran out of demerara sugar so used golden granulated instead. Worked just the same - gives the top of the muffins a little crunch which is perfect against the fluffy middles

oh and I also used semi skimmed milk as that was all I had. Didn't taste at all "skinny", iyswim

I might try these.

Final note: You can measure out the dry ingredients the night before and prep muffin tin. In the morning, whisk together the wet ingredients and stir them into the waiting bowl of dry ingredients.

I have some homemade marmalade as well, so we could have them together. [[perfect houswife emoticon]

I'll have to try this
Thank you tulpe

I only have fresh cranberries. How will this affect the recipe?

i did this last year and they were lovely

was thinking i'd do without this year but to hell with it!

can make with or without cranberries or substitute dried friut

not sure about fresh cranberries...

The fresh cranberries will be a bit hard and a bit tart rainbow if you use them raw. I'd probably bung a few in a saucepan with some sugar and water (as if you were making a cranberry sauce), and take them off the stove before they start to pop just to sweeten and soften them a bit, then chop into small pieces, as the dried cranberries are really tiny.

thanks.

Yes I would either substitute for fresh blueberries or some other kind of dried fruit.

Ooh, those little Italian candied fruits would be nice.