Applesauce muffins

These muffins are based on the previous recipe, Pumpkin muffins, but aren’t gluten free.

Inspired by a jar of apple sauce that needed using up, and having a day of board games planned, baking muffins to feed our friends (other than crisps, fried stuff & sandwiches) sounded like a good idea.

The muffins are ready in 45 minutes. Total. Of those, 30 minutes are baking time, so you can do your cleanup meanwhile. Quick bakes are also a bonus point in my book!

Applesauce muffins

Applesauce muffins

Ingredients

  • 350 grams applesauce
  • 80 ml mild (olive) oil
  • 2 eggs
  • 175 grams cane sugar
  • 200 grams flour
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 2 tsp speculaas spice mix

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 175°C. Line 12 muffin tin with paper or silicon liners.
  2. In a bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and spices.
  3. In a blender, mix applesauce, olive oil, and sugar. Blend until smooth. Add eggs and pulse until mixed.
  4. Add applesauce mix to dry ingredients and mix until well combined.
  5. Divide dough between the 12 cavities.
  6. Bake at 175°C for 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of a muffin comes out clean.
  7. Let cool in muffin enough to handle, remove muffins from tin and let cool on rack.

Pumpkin muffins (lactose & gluten free)

Lately I am experimenting with dairy / gluten / egg free baking. Having friends that are allergic / intolerant to one of more of those, and me liking a challenge, baking for them is a good opportunity.

Pumpkin Muffins Photo credit: Nadege

Pumpkin Muffins
 Photo (c) Nadege Biojout

 

These muffins are both dairy & gluten free, but do contain eggs. I will experimenting with the egg part next. I am happy to say that they have a nice earthy spicy flavour, and a fantastic soft moist crumbly texture. Texture wise, they are faboulous, to be honest!

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cups pumpkin puree (to make: cut sweet pumpkin in quarters, scoop seeds out, and steam pumpkin for 25-30 minutes, or until the flesh starts to separate from the skin, scoop the flesh from the skin, mash, and measure) (to be updated with metric measurement)
  • 2 eggs
  • 175 grams cane sugar
  • 75 ml olive olive (use a mild one)
  • 60 grams corn-based all purpose gluten free flour (basically a mix of corn starch, corn flour, guar gum)
  • 60 grams quinoa flour (ground quinoa flakes works well)
  • 60 grams (white) rice flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2  tsp each cinnamon, ground ginger, all spice & chinese 5 spice

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 175°C. Place rack in middle of oven. Line 12 cavity muffin tray with paper liners or silicon liners.
  2. In a big bowl mix pumpkin puree, eggs, sugar and oil very well with an immersion mixer. Alternatively you can use a blender.
  3. In a small bowl mix all flours, baking soda, baking powder, salt & spices. Add to wet ingredients and mix with a spatula until no blobs (very technical name) of flour are left.
  4. Divide batter among the cavities of the muffin tray.
  5. Bake in oven for 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
  6. Let muffins cool enough to remove from tray, transfer to cooling rack and let cool (or enjoy warm, if you cannot wait).
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Open muffin showing the texture

I really couldn’t wait to eat them so I forgot to take a picture before I started. Here you can see the nice crumb & fluffy texture of the muffins.

The bad thing about technology…

… such as smartphones, is that it becomes obsolete. And after a while, it starts to fail. And that’s what’s happening with my trusty Nexus 4. I’ve had it for more than 2,5 years and lately it keeps dropping cellphone and gps reception. Which is annoying when you use it to navigate and are in the middle of nowhere.

Anyway, since I don’t like paying premium for my phones, and I don’t require tomorrow’s technology – but I do want something better than I had, I decided to get a OnePlus X. And this is the story of that purchase (the phone hasn’t arrived yet).

So, I selected my phone & accessories on the site, and clicked on purchase. This requires you to make an account. Ok, create an account: username, email & password, please check this box to let us know you’re not a bot. I got my account confirmation email, clicked on the link, account confirmed. So then I go to sign in, and hey, why do I bother with an username, when I have to use my email to log in! First failure on their part.

Ok, logged in. Go to my cart: your cart is empty! Apparently, they ate all the cookies and didn’t want to save my cart. Fine. Go shopping again. Wait, why is now everything in $ instead of €? Go back to check my account settings – I had already filled in name & country, but apparently these settings do not get transferred to the shopping settings, which you have to fill in, again, manual. It feels like it’s 1999! Fine, fill in it all again, and finally be able to shop for the phone. At least they take paypal, so I did’t have to go get my credit card and auth dongle to pay :D

Lastly, realize phone takes nano-sim, current phone takes micro-sim card. So I had to order a replacement from MobileVikings (affiliate link, please change provided, gimme credit!) – which used to be free, but now it costs 5€. Oh well. Now to see if the stars align and everything arrives on time.