citrus muffins

I never liked eating oranges when I was  a kid. Called me pampered, called me spoilt, but unless the oranges were without a doubt sweet as honey, I wouldn’t even look at them. 

I haven’t changed much. I still refuse to eat any fruit that is less then sweet, but the only difference now is that I found an orange that would never fail to be sweet. It’s a strain of navel oranges that we can find in my local grocery store, and while they do not come cheap (at RM1.90 per piece, my fruits are the most expensive part of my groceries really.), I still buy them to satisfy my more atas tastebuds.

We happened to have a little too much oranges one weekend though, and because I wanted to see how these would fare in baking, I ended up whipping up these decent looking, delicious tasting orange muffins.

I call them citrus muffins because you can really replace the orange with a lemon, and get a lemon muffin instead, whichever rocks your boat. I just liked the refreshing taste of orange in an otherwise fluffy, but normal tasting muffin. Because I had some extra kaya and chocolate chips, I stirred them in as well. Consider the muffins a base recipe, and you can add whatever you want in the batter.

The taste was refreshing, the texture pillowy, soft, just moist enough but not overly moist so as to make it dense. It’s not overtly sweet, and would taste great as something to snack on in the afternoon, maybe with some butter or jam if you like? The refreshing scent of oranges helps greatly too, and you’d be surprised at how light it tastes like.

Citrus Muffins

Adapted from Nigella Lawson’s Nigella Bites

Ingredients

• 75g unsalted butter, melted
• 250g self raising flour
• 25g ground almond
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 60g granulated sugar
• zest of 1 orange
• 100ml orange juice, fresh
• 100ml milk
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup jam (optional)
• 1/3 cup chocolate chips (optional)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven 200C, and line a 12-hole muffin pan with paper liners.
2. Melt butter in a skillet, and leave to cool.
3. In a bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, ground almonds, sugar and zest of the orange, and whisk together with a fork.
4. In a jar, combine orange juice, milk, 1 egg and whisk well. Add in cooled melted butter.
5. Slowly pour the butter mixture in to the flour mixture, mixing with a fork as you go along. It’s fine if the batter is slightly lumpy, overmixed batter does not result in fluffy muffins.
6. Once well incorporated, spoon batter in to prepared liners. If adding jam, add batter to 1/3 of the way, add in a dollop of jam and then fill the rest of the liner up to 2/3 of the way. If adding chocolate chips, stir chocolate chips in to batter just before filling the liners.
7. Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Serve warm for optimum tastebud satisfaction.