Double Chocolate Orange Muffins (vaguely healthy!)
I was at home with a chickenpoxy Ellis last week and one of the distraction activities I came up with was making these muffins. They’re from Anna Jones’ a Modern way to Cook, adapted to fit what I had at home or could get from the corner shop.
The flour in the book recipe is spelt and rye, and it says you can sub for any gluten free flour. Not sure what the significance of the gluten freeness is, whether it would make them have a different consistency, but we’ll never know as I subbed for plain white flour and strong white bread flour, as that’s all I had. It certianly doesn’t have done any harm! I also had to top up my coconut oil with sunflower and my maple syrup with honey, and I put more stuff in the muffins, and less on top.
These are dairy and refined sugar free, the book version says they are suitable as breakfast muffins, but in my opinion they taste more like a proper cake.
Here’s the recipe (adapted version), this made 16 cupcake sized things, even with Ellis eating spoonfuls of the batter
Ingredients:
150ml coconut oil
250ml almond milk
4 eggs
150ml maple syrup
150g self raising flour
50g strong white bread flour
5 tablespoons cocoa powder (I used extra dark)
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 large oranges
100g dark (70%) chocolate
Method:
preheat oven at 220 degrees/200 fan/gas 7
Whisk oil, milk, eggs and maple syrup in a bowl. Grate in the zest of 1 orange
Sift flour, cocoa and baking power in a separate bowl
Mix dry and wet ingredients with a spatula or wooden spoon
Chop up chocolate into pieces, and put about 80g into the batter. Set rest aside.
Chop oranges into small pieces and put in the batter
Spoon into muffin or cupcake cases
Top with the rest of the chocolate
Bake for 16-18 minutes
