Fruity nutty carrot muffins

The other night, I really wanted to try out making some carrot and apple cake, but I’d run out of apples. Hmm. Instead, I decided to mix lots of things together that I like into some muffins, and the result was pretty good. They’re really moist (I added ground almonds in place of some of the flour), a beautiful orange colour and I think do the carrots justice. They’re not as dense as some carrot cakes that are around, either. I didn’t use any frosting but I’m sure they’d be great with some mascarpone with orange zest on top. I’ll also get around to trying the apple and carrot version one day!

Makes 8 muffins
125g butter at room temperature
125g light brown soft sugar
100g plain flour
30g ground almonds
1 tsp cinnamon
1 ½ tsp baking powder
50g dried fruits – I used a mixture of raisins and sultanas (really big ones)
A handful of almonds
A couple of handfuls of walnuts
Zest of one orange
A tablespoon or two of the juice from said orange
1 egg
About 150g carrot (or mixture of carrot and apple), grated

Preheat the oven to 170 (fan) and line a couple of tins with muffin cases.

Cream together the butter, sugar and zest until it’s light and there are no grainy sugar bits left. I like to add the zest in at this stage because I think the beating brings out the lovely orangey-ness. Add the egg and beat again.

Chop the nuts roughly (don’t leave any really big bits but I quite like mine to be relatively chunky) and add these and the fruits into the flour, cinnamon, ground almonds and baking powder. Mix these dry ingredients into the butter, sugar and eggs gradually. You don’t need to worry too much about being very careful as it’s quite a heavy cake mix.

Then add the grated carrot and mix well to ensure it’s all evenly distributed. Depending on how juicy your carrots are, you might want to add a bit of orange juice in at this point.

Divide the mixture between the cases – they will rise a bit, so don’t fill them too full – and bake for between 25-30 mins.

Note: depending on the juiceiness of your carrots, you might need to add a bit of milk to your cake batter. Just play it by ear and make sure it's thin enough that it falls off the wooden spoon!

Bashed roots with sausages and an onion, apple and cider sauce

My first veggie box meal!

Now this was super tasty. The sauce is kind of syrupy in texture and really brings the whole meal together – it’s almost like a warm liquidy chutney. This is lovely comfort food.

Mash/bash
Some celeriac (I used a quarter of quite a big one for 4 people)
A swede
Potato (enough to feed as many as you’ve got – I used about 3 for 4 people)
(could also be nice with other roots – parsnips, carrots, squash)
knob of butter
lots of salt and pepper
might also be good with a bit of mustard stirred in according to taste – I didn’t try this tho

Scrub, peel and chop the roots, then pop them into a saucepan of water, bring to the boil and simmer until done (I think 15-20 mins but a knife is the best indicator!) Drain, season and mash to the texture you like it. I like it quite lumpy, so you still get little pieces of different veg – you might get a nice celeriac mouthful, yum! Add a bit of butter for smoothness – you could also add a bit of milk if you wanted, or leave both out.

Sauce
1 onion finely sliced
a couple of big cloves of garlic, finely sliced
a couple of sprigs of rosemary, finely chopped
half to one apple, peeled and sliced into little bits (it will cook down a little bit so don’t worry too much about it)
a bottle of cider
sprinkling of sugar

To make this I sweated the onions on a low-ish heat for about 15 minutes in a pan with a bit of sugar, then added the garlic and apple for about 5-10 mins. After that I added the rosemary and the bottle of cider, and simmered and reduced it until it was syrupy.

I served these up with some veggie sausages (good for adapting for meat eaters too!) and some steamed cabbage sprinkled with a little salt after cooking.