Nigella Lawson Orange Breakfast Muffins

Submitted by Flowerfairy

"If you’re going to attempt anything other than a bowl of cereal for an ordinary weekday breakfast, then muffins are the best bet. They are the easiest things to make, not least because the laziest of stirring is what’s required. The truth is that a heavy, lumpy batter makes for the lightest muffin. Split them still warm and, mouthful by mouthful, smear with the best unsalted butter you can find, adding as you want, marmalade, jam or amber, liquid-light honey."

 

• Ready In: 30mins
• Ingredients: 10
• Yields: 12 muffins
• Serves: 6

ingredients

• 75 g unsalted butter
• 250 g self-raising flour
• 25 g ground almonds
• 1⁄2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 75 g caster sugar
• 1 orange, zest of
• 100 ml freshly squeezed orange juice
• 100 ml full-fat milk
• 1 egg

directions

1. Preheat the oven to 200?C/gas mark 6.
2. Melt the butter and set aside.
3. Combine the flour, ground almonds, bicarb, baking powder, sugar and orange zest in a large bowl.
4. Measure the orange juice and milk into a jug and whisk in the egg and then the cooled, melted butter.
5. Now pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients, mixing with a fork as you go. The batter will be lumpy but that's as it should be: you want everything to be no more than barely combined. The whole point of muffin mixture is that it must never be overworked.
6. Spoon out the mixture equally into the muffin cases and cook for 20 minutes.
7. Remove, in their paper cases, to a wire rack and let cool slightly (but not completely) before devouring.

Reviews

[swissms]

Very good. Delicate orange flavor and not too sweet. I love combining orange and chocolate so I added semi-sweet chocolate chips to half of the muffins. Would also be good with white chocolate chips. To help those North Americans who do not weigh ingredients, here are the measurements I used: 1/3 c. butter, 2 c. all-purpose flour, 1/4 c. ground almonds, 1 1/2 t. baking powder, 1/2 t. salt, 1/2 t. baking soda, 6 T sugar, 1/2 c. orange juice and 1/2 c. milk. Made for PAC Spring 2009.

 

[Mad Quilters Tea Pa]

If you halve this recipe to 6 muffins, the batter fits perfectly into the Tupperware Large Muffin form (the red one with 4 muffin cavities, which i don't think they make anymore). Omit the orange zest and juice... increase the milk and you have the best basic muffin mix for any flavour. I just added 2 ripe bananas instead of the orange juice (did not increase the milk for this one as the mashed bananas give it the moisture it needs) and they were just the nicest banana muffins! Then using the same base (no banana this time) I added about a cup of diced cheese, ham, favourite herbs, spring onion, salt and pepper... added a little more cheese to melt on top of each muffin and these made the nicest breakfast or lunch savoury muffin. I've also made this base into cranberry and lime muffins, white chocolate and blueberry muffins, cinnamon apple and oats... the options are endless. This is just one of the greatest basic muffin recipes to play with to your own tastes desire!

 

[marianrandall]

Love this recipe. Much lighter than most breakfast muffins. Let your family split them while still warm , drop in a small knob of butter and marmalade & Let it all melt together ... No spreading required!

 

[HBoxshall]

I am a big fan of Nigellas, but I didn't feel this recipe worked as well as some of her others. The muffins were too light and fell apart too easily, which made spreading jam on them almost impossible.