Last year was the first year I cooked Christmas dinner (and the first one my mum hadn't cooked for about 30 years!!) so to mark the occasion I decided to start my own Christmas tradition that I hope to carry on every year - Christmas morning muffins!
My family have never been the sort to have a full cooked breakfast on Christmas day - as children there was too much anticipation for our presents and we were so busy with church in the morning and looking forward to the lunch, that breakfast always took a back seat. These muffins are perfect if you just want a light breakfast and they also smell heavenly in the oven.
Christmas Morning Muffins courtesy of
Nigella Lawson
Ingredients
250g plain flour
21/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
100g caster sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
good grating of fresh nutmeg (or 1/4teaspoon 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
Method:
Preheat the oven to 200°C/gas mark 6. Line a 12-bun muffin tin with muffin papers
Measure the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, caster sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg into a large bowl; grate the zest of the clementine/satsuma over, and combine. If you are doing this in advance, leave the zesting till Christmas morning.
Squeeze the juice of the clementines/satsumas into a measuring jug, and pour in the milk until it comes up to the 200ml mark.
Add the oil (or slightly cooled, melted butter) and egg, and lightly beat until just combined.
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.
Fold in the cranberries, then spoon the batter into the muffin cases and sprinkle the demerara sugar on top. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes, by which time the air should be thick with the promise of good things and the good things themselves golden brown and ready to be eaten, either plain or broken up and smeared, as you go, with unsalted butter and marmalade.
Nigella says
What's more, if you measure out the dry ingredients the night before and put the muffin cases in the muffin tin, you don't need to do anything more labour intensive on Christmas morning itself than preheat your oven, whisk up a few runny ingredients in a jug and stir them into the waiting bowl. Then dollop the batter into the prepared muffin cases and all's sweet - and smelling of cinnamony, orange-scented Christmas
Have a great weekend everyone!
Rachie xo
