Spiced Cheddar Cornbread Muffins #MuffinMonday

These spiced cheddar cornbread muffins are baked with cumin, kalonji and cayenne pepper, tasty savory treats perfect for breakfast or snack time.

 

The weather has already turned chilly and my husband has a toothache which makes chewing hard things painful. Those two things mean soups have been on the menu. Not that I’m complaining, of course. I love soup. 

I also love crusty bread or muffins to serve with them. Those complete the meal for me. Since crusty bread is hard to chew, this time I chose savory, spicy, cheesy muffins.

(P.S. For those who are concerned, he has a dentist’s appointment tomorrow morning. With any luck, he’ll be back to chewing again by dinner time.)

Spiced Cheddar Cornbread Muffins 

This recipe was adapted from one on BBC Good Food. It makes 8 regular sized muffins. 

Ingredients

1 cup or 125g flour

1/3 cup or 60g cornmeal or polenta

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 1/4 teaspoons cumin seeds

1 1/4 teaspoons kalonji aka nigella seeds

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon mustard powder

1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

3 oz or 85g extra-mature cheddar, grated

1/2 cup or 120ml milk

1/4 cup or 60ml canola or other light oil, plus extra for the muffin pan

1 egg

Method

Heat the oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your muffin pan by greasing eight holes. (Or use silicone cups on a pan. Mine are from Crate and Barrel but they are sold in many stores! I love them.) 

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, mustard powder, cayenne and salt. Add in 1 teaspoon each of the cumin and kalonji seeds, reserving the last 1/4 teaspoon of each for sprinkling on top the muffins before baking. 

Add the grated cheddar, reserving a couple of tablespoons for topping, to the dry ingredients and stir to coat. 

In another smaller bowl, whisk the milk, oil and egg together and pour them into the dry ingredient bowl. Fold until just combined. 

Divide the mixture between the muffin cups. Combine the reserved cheese, cumin and kalonji and sprinkle this over the tops.

Bake the muffins for 20-22 mins until puffed up and golden. Leave to cool for 10 minutes in the pan, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. 

Enjoy! 

It's Muffin Monday, the last Monday of every month, when we share our love of muffin baking and recipes. Check out the links below!

• Cinnamon Pear Muffins from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Fresh Fig and Orange Muffins from Palatable Pastime
• Honey Oat Muffins from Jolene's Recipe Journal
• Sourdough Maple Pecan Muffins from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Spiced Cheddar Cornbread Muffins from Food Lust People Love

#MuffinMonday is a group of muffin loving bakers who get together once a month to bake muffins. You can see all of our lovely muffins by following our Pinterest board. Updated links for all of our past events and more information about Muffin Monday can be found on our home page.

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Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes

These dark chocolate pumpkin cupcakes are made with special dark cocoa and canned pumpkin, then topped with buttercream frosting and pumpkin candy for a delightful seasonal treat.

Who remembers Pick-A-Mix? Back in the good old days, Brach’s candies were displayed in an open case in many stores with a big Pick-A-Mix sign. You helped yourself to a bag and filled it with your choice of candies, paying by the weight. Often these candy cases were near the front of the store, just by the lines for the cashiers. 

My grandmother was a real character and, while she had a generous heart where her grandchildren were concerned, she did not tolerate laziness or ineptitude well, even in us. If the store had long lines at the cashier and only one or two lanes open, Gram would instruct us each to choose a candy from the Pick-A-Mix. 

She considered that well-deserved compensation for a lengthy wait in line. As a child I was mortified to comply, but one did not argue with my grandmother! My favorites were the cinnamon or the butterscotch hard candies. 

Nowadays it’s a rare store that still has a Pick-A-Mix case, but one can buy those Brach’s candies in bags, some with seasonal variations like the autumn mix, the party mix and the old-fashioned holiday mix with red, white and green hard candies.

Can I confess that I’m not a huge fan of the autumn candy mix for eating? I do love them for decorating though! Nothing cheers up a cake, cookie or cupcake like a few candy corns or tiny pumpkins scattered about. Those instantly say autumn to me. Halloween is not far off AND Thanksgiving is coming just behind it! 

With that in mind, I’ve baked you some chocolate pumpkin cupcakes, topped with the little Autumn mix pumpkins I have on hand. Wouldn’t they be perfect as one of the desserts for your Halloween party or Thanksgiving table? 

Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes 

This recipe makes 18 cupcakes and plenty of buttercream frosting.  Using special dark cocoa ensures maximum chocolate flavor but if you don't have it, normal cocoa can be substituted. The addition of pumpkin adds a very subtle background taste even pumpkin haters might not discern, but it gives 

these cupcakes super moisture and creates a tender crumb. 

Ingredients

For the cupcake batter – makes 18:

2 1/2 cups or 315g all-purpose flour

1/4 cup or 30g extra dark special cocoa powder

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 1/2 cups or 355g canned pumpkin – not pie filling

1 1/2 cups or 300g granulated sugar

1/2 cup or 120ml whole milk

1/4 cup or 57g butter, melted and cooled

2 eggs

For the vanilla buttercream frosting - makes about 3-3/4 cups:

1 1/2 lbs or 675g confectioners’ sugar

1 cup or 226g butter, softened

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon salt

6-8 tablespoons milk

To decorate – optional 

Ground cinnamon

Sparkly sugar

Candy pumpkins or candy corn

Shavings of chocolate candy

Method

Preheat oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your cupcakes pans by greasing them with butter or lining them with paper cupcake liners. 

Sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and baking soda in a large bowl. Set aside. 

Using your stand mixer or electric beaters, beat together the pumpkin, sugar, milk and butter. 

Add eggs in one by one, mixing well with each addition. 

Slowly add dry ingredients to wet as you mix. Mix until well combined. 

Spoon batter into your prepared cupcake cups.

Bake 20 to 25 minutes. Cupcakes are done when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. 

Let cool completely before you top them with frosting. 

To make the frosting:

In large bowl, with mixer at medium-low speed, beat confectioners’ sugar, butter, vanilla, and 6 tablespoons milk until smooth and blended. 

Increase speed to medium-high; beat until frosting is light and fluffy, occasionally scraping bowl with rubber spatula. Beat in additional milk as needed for easy spreading consistency.

Use a piping bag and a large tip to decorate the cooled cupcakes with frosting. 

From high above the cupcakes, sprinkle a small pinch of cinnamon on each cupcake, along with some sparkly sugar, if desired. Top each with a tiny pumpkin or other seasonal candy.

Enjoy!  

It’s Sunday FunDay and today we are sharing recipes with pumpkin! Many thanks to our host, Renu of Renu Cooks. Check out all the pumpkin recipes below. 

• Almond Flour Pumpkin Muffins from Amy's Cooking Adventures
• Chocolate Pumpkin Cupcakes from Food Lust People Love
• Pumpkin and Black Bean Quesadillas from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Pumpkin Crème Brûlée from Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• Pumpkin Prune Quick Bread from Palatable Pastime
• Pumpkin Sweet Potato and Amaranth Patties from Cook with Renu
• Quick Pumpkin And Other Veggies Sabzi from Sneha’s Recipe

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join. 

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Baked Lobster Roll Dip

This Baked Lobster Roll Dip is a twist on the traditional sandwich, with many of the same ingredients, plus cream cheese, it’s a fabulous appetizer! Serve it with a crusty loaf or slices of baguette. Frankly, it would be a great filling for a baked potato as well. 

When our Fish Friday Foodies host for this month event decided on Lobster Rolls as our theme, I was excited because here on the island of Jersey, the lobsters are lovely and freshly caught but I didn’t feel like making a plain sandwich on a bread roll. 

It occurred to me that I could take the lobster roll ingredients perhaps and serve it as a dip instead, like lobster salad. A quick google search revealed that many people had already had that idea, thousands of them in fact. Many were served cold but I was most intrigued by the baked ones, which had a variety of cheese from gruyere or cheddar to Parmesan and cream cheese. 

I could just picture the bubbling dish, hot and melty from the oven! Irresistible! And so it is. 

Baked Lobster Roll Dip

This recipe is adapted from one shared by the Lobster Council of Canada. 

lobstercouncilcanada.ca/recipes/lobster-roll-dip If you are curious about Canadian lobsters, I highly recommend a visit to their site. My cooked lobster was almost 1.1 pound or 500g which yielded 8 oz or 225g of meat from the tail and claws. 

Ingredients

8 oz or 225g plain cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup or 120ml mayonnaise

1/3 cup or 80ml sour cream

8 oz or 225g cooked lobster meat

1 rib celery, finely chop

1/4 medium purple onion (about 40g), finely minced

1 green onion - just the green part

2 tablespoons or 20g drained capers

3 tablespoons or 45ml freshly squeezed lemon juice

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon Old Bay seasoning

1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

To serve:

Baguette, sliced in circles, toasted or untoasted, crusty bread or crackers

Method

Preheat your oven to 400°F or 200°C. Finely chop your celery and green onion top. Finely mince the onion. 

In medium bowl, using handheld electric mixer or in the bowl of your stand mixer, beat cream cheese, mayonnaise and sour cream until smooth and blended. 

Add in the celery, capers, onion, green onion, lemon juice, mustard, cayenne pepper, Old Bay seasoning, salt and black pepper and beat again until combined. 

Chop your lobster meat into small chunks. 

Fold in the lobster into the mixture.

Spread the dip in a baking dish and give the top an extra sprinkle of cayenne, if desired.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until it’s bubbling and hot! Serve with your choice of bread or crackers. 

Enjoy! 

It’s Fish Friday Foodie time! Many thanks to our host, Camilla of Culinary Adventures with Camilla. Check out all of Lobster Roll related recipes below!

• A Lobster Roll Style Debate: Maine vs. Connecticut by Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• Brown Butter Lobster Roll by Palatable Pastime
• Baked Lobster Roll Dip by Food Lust People Love
• Hot Buttered Lobster Rolls with Homemade New England Style Buns by Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Lobster Melt English Muffin Sandwich by Sneha's Recipe
• Lobster Roll BLT by A Day in the Life on the Farm

Would you like to join Fish Friday Foodies? We post and share new seafood/fish recipes on the third Friday of the month. To join our group please email Wendy at wendyklik1517 (at) gmail.com. Visit our Facebook page and Pinterest page for more wonderful fish and seafood recipe ideas.

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Soft Sourdough Pretzel Knots #BreadBakers

These soft sourdough pretzel knots are simple to make, requiring only one rise before shaping. They are wonderful warm or toasted for snacking. Split in two, they are great for small sandwiches.

Most traditional pretzel recipes, like those for good chewy bagels, call for a quick dip in boiling water before baking. Sometimes I’m up for it but often I’m not so I was glad to find a recipe on kingarthurbaking.com that skipped that step. The pretzels still turned out lovely, soft and a little chewy. 

We’ve been enjoying them with all sorts of fillings and toppings. Definitely a keeper recipe!

Soft Sourdough Pretzel Knots

As mentioned above, this recipe is adapted from one on the King Arthur Baking website. The final wash calls for non-diastatic malt powder or granulated sugar but I figured, if the point was color, dark brown sugar would help. It did! I also substituted powdered coconut milk to great effect, making this a vegan recipe. 

Ingredients

3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons warm water

2 teaspoons active dry yeast

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

1 cup or 227g sourdough starter, unfed/discard

3 cups or 381g unbleached bread flour

1/4 cup or 28g powdered coconut milk (or dry milk powder)

1 1/2 teaspoons fine sea salt

For baking:

1 tablespoon, firmly packed, dark brown sugar 

1 tablespoon water

flakey salt

Method

Prepare a baking sheet by spraying it with vegetable oil spray, or lining it with parchment paper. Grease the parchment with vegetable oil spray to make double-sure the pretzels won't stick.

Measure the dry active yeast into a small bowl and stir in the two tablespoons of warm water along with the sugar. Set aside to prove. The yeast should activate and become foamy. 

Weigh your flour; or measure it by gently spooning it into a cup, then sweeping off any excess. Mix and knead the dough ingredients, including the bowl with the activated yeast — by hand, mixer, or bread machine — to make a cohesive, fairly smooth dough. It should be slightly sticky; if it seems dry, knead in an additional tablespoon of water.

Cover the dough with a damp cloth or cling film and let it rest for 45 minutes. My kitchen is pretty chilly right now so I put my dough bowl in a larger bowl of warm water. That works a treat to help the dough rise properly. 

Towards the end of the rising time, preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface then divide it into 12 equal balls, each weighing about 2 1/2 oz or 71g. (My whole dough ball weighed 848g so that weight for each ball was spot on.)

Roll each piece of dough into an 12 in or 31cm rope. 

Shape each rope into a knot. I found this very tricky but the key seemed to be making sure the piece of dough was at least 12 inches long. Any shorter and forming the knot is a struggle. Video instructions here, also from King Arthur Baking.

Dissolve the brown sugar in the water. Brush the pretzel knots with the solution, and immediately sprinkle them lightly with flakey salt.

Bake the pretzel knots for 20-25 minutes, until they're a lovely golden brown. I turn my pan halfway through to make sure they brown evenly since my oven seems to have hot spots. 

Remove the pretzel knots from the oven. Serve warm or leave to cool on a wire rack. 

Enjoy! 

It’s the second Tuesday of the month so that means it’s time for me and my fellow Bread Bakers to share recipes. Check out the links below. Many thanks to our host Renu from Cook with Renu who chose our theme Anything Pretzel. 

• Air Fryer Soft Pretzel Bites from Cook with Renu
• Homemade Pretzel Bites from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Keto Pretzel Bites from Sneha's Recipe
• Pretzel Hamburger Buns from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Soft Sourdough Pretzel Knots from Food Lust People Love
• Toffee Apple Pretzels from A Messy Kitchen
• Double Jalapeno Cheese Pretzel from Magical Ingredients

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

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Shrimp Spring Roll Bowls

If you love fresh spring rolls with noodles, cucumber, carrot and a lovely spicy dipping sauce, you will love these shrimp spring roll bowls! They are so tasty and easy to make! 

One of my favorite things to eat are these fresh shrimp spring rolls but they are fiddly to put together. First, you have to cook the shrimp flat so they fit in the roll. Then there's the whole soaking the rice paper wrapper till it's pliant enough but not TOO soft so it rips. A labor of love that always felt worth it, till now. 

When our Sunday FunDay host chose "meals in bowls" as our theme today, it occurred to me that, truly, the rice paper wrapper is completely unnecessary unless, of course, you need finger food. 

If you are eating at home and have a table and a fork (spoon also helpful!), the bowls make a wonderful, fresh meal. This revelation is a game changer for me and I don’t think I’ll make rolls again! Not having to wrap the filling meant I could also add some carrots and radishes. All in all, these bowls were a good decision. 

Shrimp Spring Roll Bowls

The noodles used in these bowls are called bean thread noodles or sometimes glass noodles. They are made of mung beans. They are not the same as rice noodles but you’ll find those two noodle types together at many grocery stores in the international aisle or in any Asian market. Depending on the level of heat you enjoy, use all bird’s eye chili peppers or a combo of the bigger less hot chili peppers and the bird’s eye ones. 

Ingredients to serve 2 generously (we both had a little bit leftover)

3 bundles bean thread noodles (about 5 1/3 oz or 150g)

8 large shrimp, peeled and cleaned

fine sea salt

1 small carrot (about 40g), cut in thin strips

1/4 long cucumber (115g), seeded removed, cut in sticks

Small bunch cilantro leaves

1 green onion, thinly sliced

4 French radishes or their round equivalent

For those of you wondering how I got the carrots this thin, here's the tool I used. It looks kind of like a peeler but it cuts the carrot into thin strips. I have no idea what it's called but I love it. 

For the sauce/dressing:

3 hot red chili peppers, minced

1/2 cup or 120ml rice vinegar 

1/2 cup or 120ml water

1/3 cup or 75g sugar

1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt 

To serve:

Fish sauce, optional - we like the little bit of extra flavor and saltiness it adds to these shrimp spring roll bowls. 

Method 

Put the noodles in a heatproof bowl and cover them with boiling water. 

Leave to soak for a few minutes then tip into a colander and rinse well with cold water. Set aside in the colander to drain. 

Cut the shrimp into pieces and lightly salt them.  Cook in a small skillet till cooked through. 

To make the sauce, chop your peppers finely.

Put all the sauce ingredients into a small pot. 

Bring to a boil and then simmer, uncovered, until it is reduced to one-third of the original amount. Turn the fire off. It will thicken even more as it cools. 

Cut the noodles with scissors to make them easier to eat. Put them in a large bowl and pour the warm sauce over them and stir to combine. 

At this point, you can finish assembling the bowls or you can cover and refrigerate the noodles to assemble later. 

To assemble the bowls, divide the noodles into two bowls. Add the cucumber and carrot sticks, the cilantro leaves, shrimp, green onion and radishes. Finish with a drizzle of fish sauce, if desired. 

Enjoy! 

It’s Sunday FunDay and today we are all sharing “meals in bowls.” Check out the links below. Many thanks to our host, Mayuri from Mayuri’s Jikoni.

• Shredded Beef Taco Bowls from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Greek Chicken Rice Bowls from Amy's Cooking Adventures
• Saffron Bulgur Bowl from Palatable Pastime
• Tofu and Sprouted Moong Buddha Bowl from Cook with Renu
• Shrimp Spring Roll Bowls from Food Lust People Love
• Cheesy Rice Bowl - Cafe McDonalds Style from Sneha’s Recipe
• Baked Falafel Bowl from Mayuri’s Jikoni

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join. 

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