Almond Cherry Muffins #MuffinMonday

Toasted almonds, ground almonds and almond liqueur complement the dried cherries perfectly in this tender muffin. Superb for breakfast or teatime. 

I was thinking the other day, as I made the chocolate shot cookies, that they would also be great with almond flour, for a sort of almond shortbread. Or maybe I could substitute coconut for the oatmeal and roll them in some toasted coconut. All of these things may happen one day but meanwhile, it’s Muffin Monday so I decided to take the first idea and muffin with it. You know, like “run with it” but in a muffinly way. At the suggestion of my friend and fellow blogger, Ishita, I celebrated the fact that I now have a liquor license, which permits me to buy alcohol in Dubai, and added a little Amaretto! I also added dried cherries because almond and cherry is a classic combination and when you are making up new verbs and celebrating being 18 again at the age of 51, you have to show that you aren’t a completely crazy renegade or no one will take you seriously. That’s a fact.

Despite the expiration date, I just got the card. It seems the date starts
from your application, even if it takes them more than a month to process. 

I used this recipe from King Arthur Flour as my jumping off place.

Ingredients
1 cup or 200g granulated sugar
1 cup or 125g flour
1 cup or 100g ground almonds
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup or 120ml canola or other light oil
1/2 cup or 120ml milk
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon Amaretto or almond liqueur
1 cup or 140g dried cherries
1 cup or 75g shaved almonds, lightly toasted

Method
Preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C and either grease your 12-cup muffin tin or line it with paper liners.  (I use paper liners but give the whole thing a quick spray with Pam so that any drips will clean off easily.)

In one big mixing bowl, combine your dry ingredients: flour, ground almonds, sugar, baking powder and salt.  Set aside.

In another small bowl, whisk the eggs with the milk, oil and liqueur.

Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture, stirring until just combined.

There should still be some dry flour showing. Take out a good handful of the cherries and the toasted almonds and set them aside for decorating the muffin tops. Fold the rest of the cherries and almonds into the batter.

Divide the batter between the muffin cups.

Top each with some of the reserved toasted almonds and poke a piece or two of dried cherries into the batter.

Bake in your preheated oven for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for a few minutes.

Remove from the muffin pan and finish cooling on a rack.

Enjoy! Have you muffined anything lately?

P.S. I have two giveaways ending shortly. The great Cookie Week baking package including baking ingredients, equipment and four cookbooks ends at Midnight New York time today!

And the Food Truck Road Trip - a Cookbook giveaway ends at Midnight New York time on Tuesday, that is to say tomorrow.

Don't miss your chance to enter and win! 

Chocolate Shot Cookies

Rich and buttery, like all shortbead cookies should be, these refrigerate-and-slice chocolate shot cookies also contain rolled oats. They are easy to make, keep well in the freezer and will be a welcome addition to your holiday cookie baking.

 

Welcome to the last day of Cookie Week, hosted by Kim of Cravings of a Lunatic and Susan of The Girl In the Little Red Kitchen! We hope you've enjoyed this week as much as we have!

On to the final cookies! 
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I am a cookbook junkie. I have a very hard time passing by a stack of books at a garage sale or car boot sale or estate sale or charity shop without rifling through them and looking for cookbooks. Sometimes I get lucky and find an already coveted book and sometimes I find a treasure previously unknown to me.

The book whence came this slightly adapted recipe is one of the latter finds. It’s called Heart of the Home – Notes from a Vineyard Kitchen and it was published in 1986. According to author/illustrator Susan Branch, it is now out of print but copies can still be found on Ebay. It’s a beautiful book, hand lettered and illustrated with watercolors and each page is a joy to behold. Plus each recipe I’ve tried has been a keeper. It's so sad when beautiful books like this one are out of print so I am delighted to have found a copy.

Ingredients for 2 1/2 dozen cookies
1 cup or 225g butter, softened
1 cup or 125g powdered or icing sugar
2 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups or 190g flour
1 cup or 90g rolled oats
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cup or 150g chocolate shots or sprinkles

Method
Cream the butter and the sugar until the mixture is fluffy. Add in the vanilla and beat again.

In a separate bowl, combine your flour, baking powder and salt.

Add them into the butter/sugar bowl, along with the oatmeal and beat until well combined.

Wrap the dough in cling film and chill for about half an hour. A word of warning: If you chill it for too long it gets completely stiff and unmalleable. (<new word I just made up. Oxford Dictionaries, take note. Why is it not a word?)

Cut the dough into three pieces and roll them into logs. Pile your chocolate shots in the middle of a clean tray with sides and roll the logs in them till you have full coverage.

Wrap the logs in more cling film and refrigerate for at least two hours or until you are ready to bake.  (These can also be frozen.)

When you are ready to bake, preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and use a thin serrated knife to slice off however many cookies you are wanting to bake. The original recipe says to use an ungreased cookie sheet but I lined mine with a silicone baking mat.

Bake in your preheated oven for about 9-11 minutes. The tops don’t brown much but the bottoms get lovely and golden. The bottom is definitely the more attractive side. :)

Just out of the oven

Enjoy!

Take a look to see what might inspire you to break out the butter and sugar this weekend.

• Black Pepper Fig Biscotti by Crumb
• Chocolate Fudge Brownie Cookies by Cravings of a Lunatic
• Chocolate Peppermint Crinkles by Jen's Favorite Cookies
• Chocolate Shot Cookies by Food Lust People Love
• Double Chocolate Espresso Cookies by Cooking in Stilettos
• Pumpkin Mallowmars by The Girl In The Little Red Kitchen
• Soft and Chewy Butterscotch Chip Pudding Cookies by Dinners, Dishes and Desserts
• The Best Gingersnaps by Mind Over Batter
• Thick & Soft Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies {Gluten Free & Dairy Free} by The Cooking Actress

Pin it! 

Christmas Pudding Cookies #CookieWeek

These little rounded Christmas Pudding Cookies have the rich taste of Christmas pud – dried fruit, dates, orange peel, spices - in bite-sized portions, complete with brandy butter to serve.

It’s Day Four of Cookie Week and I’m finally getting around to my second cookie! It’s been a busy week. But if this year’s Cookie Week is anything like last year’s Cookie Week, I know folks are going to be using our Pinterest board for holiday baking inspiration in weeks to come, so I wanted to share something a little different, with a British twist.

This recipe comes from a Jamie Oliver Christmas magazine a couple of years ago, December 2012, in fact. But, of course, he called them Christmas Pudding Biscuits. I think the only thing I’ve changed, besides the name, is to put just a little bit less flour so that the round cookie I like to bake is less dry. 

Jamie rolls them out and bakes them flat, like sugar cookies, but my cookie scoop makes the most perfect little Christmas pudding-shaped cookies and when that idea originally popped into my head, I couldn’t resist.

Make sure you scroll on down to see the other cookies we’ve baked for you today.

Ingredients
For the cookie dough:
2 2/3 oz or 75g toasted flaked almonds
5 1/3 oz or 150g medool dates, pitted
3 oz or 85g dried mixed fruit
Grated zest 1 orange
1/3 cup + 1 rounded tablespoon or 85g caster sugar
1/3 cup or 85g butter, softened
1 egg
1 1/3 cups or 165g flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon mixed spice

For the brandy butter:
1/4 cup or 50g butter, softened
1 cup or 125g icing or powdered sugar
Pinch salt
1-2 teaspoons brandy

Method
Put the toasted almonds in your food processor and process briefly to chop them up.

Add in the dates, mixed fruit and orange zest and pulse until finely chopped. This could make your food processor jump around quite a bit so make sure to hold it down while pulsing.  Set aside.

There are still going to be some small chunks and medium-sized chunks.

Combine your flour, baking powder, cinnamon and mixed spice in a bowl.

In another larger bowl, cream together your butter and sugar. Add the egg to the butter and sugar and beat well until combined.

Stir in the flour mixture, mixing well.

Now fold in the almond/fruit mixture from the food processor. It looks like it’s going to be dry and bits keep falling out but persevere. Soon it will come together into a nice thick dough.

At this point you can wrap the dough in cling film, chill it for 20 minutes and then roll it out and cut it as you would sugar cookies or  - my idea - you can scoop it into little balls with a cookie scoop.  They look like little Christmas puds!

Either way, preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare a baking pan by lining it with parchment or a silicone baking mat.

I scooped mine into little balls and baked for about 14-16 minutes, until they were golden on the outside and a little darker on the bottom.

While they bake, you can make your brandy butter.
Use a wooden spoon to beat the softened butter together with the powdered sugar and a pinch of salt.

Once it’s light and fluffy, add in the brandy one teaspoon at a time, beating well in between.

The brandy transforms the butter and sugar into something even more fluffy and light and wonderful. If you aren't using it right away, it will stiffen back up in the refrigerator and you may need to let it warm up a little before it will spread.

Once the cookies are baked, allow them to cool completely before you top them with a swipe of brandy butter.

Enjoy!

I cannot tell you how perfectly these go with a cup of tea!

Many thanks to our Cookie Week hosts Kim of Cravings of a Lunatic and Susan of The Girl In the Little Red Kitchen! We’ve got a great team of 12 bloggers bringing you five fantastic days of cookie recipes to get you in to the holiday spirit. Are you feeling like a cookie monster yet? If not, you should be – because resisting all these delicious cookies is nearly impossible!

Grab a warm cookie from our Cookie Week bloggers!

• Christmas Pudding Cookies from Stacy at Food Lust People Love
• Dulce de Leche Stuffed Chocolate Crinkle Cookies from Susan at The Girl in the Little Red Kitchen
• Nutella Skillet Cookie from Erin at Dinner, Dishes and Desserts
• Pink Coconut Cookies from Kim at Cravings of a Lunatic
• Triple Ginger Snaps from Liz at That Skinny Chick Can Bake

And here's what you might have missed from Tuesday and Wednesday while I was shaking cocktails and stirring noodles!

• Banana Walnut Biscotti by Chocolate Moosey
• Brown Butter Pecan Toffee Cookies by The Cooking Actress
• Candy Topped Toffee Squares by That Skinny Chick Can Bake
• Chocolate and Hazelnut Skillet Cookie by Cravings of a Lunatic
• Guava Thumbprint Cookies by Mind Over Batter
• Fudge Filled Chocolate Chip Cookie Cups by Chocolate Moosey
• Homemade Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Oreo Cookies by Dinners, Dishes and Desserts
• Maple Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies by The Girl In The Little Red Kitchen
• Maple Walnut Shortbread Cookies by Hungry Couple
• Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies by Dinners, Dishes and Desserts
• Pineapple Cookies with Vanilla Rum Glaze by Cooking in Stilettos
• Savory Cheddar Coins by Crumb
• S'mores Cookies by Cravings of a Lunatic
• White Chocolate Cranberry Ginger Cookies by Jen's Favorite Cookies
• White Chocolate Cranberry Macadamia Nut Cookies by The Girl In the Little Red Kitchen