Apricot and Walnut Muffins

 

 

 

These muffins are super tasty, with the walnut and apricot flavours complimenting each other nicely. One Sunday morning ‘on the spur of the moment’ Mum decided to whip some of these muffins up so I would have something to take home with me after my weekend visit (isn’t my Mum so thoughtful!)

The apricots we used in this recipe were already stewed, (Mum’s neighbours had passed a bag of fresh apricots over the fence in the summer, and Mum stewed these apricots then froze them) but canned apricots work well in this recipe too. The walnuts were a last minute addition to the recipe – we had some in the fridge already shelled, as we had collected these windfall nuts locally a few months ago. Another ingredient that works well is cream cheese. Unfortunately we didn’t have any in the fridge when making these, but if you do, just place some muffin mixture in the muffin tin, then add a dollop of cream cheese, and cover with more muffin mixture – the cream cheese is a nice little addition to be found in the middle of the muffin. Adding a sprinkling of vanilla sugar to the tops of the muffins adds a nice texture and flavour too. Mum was given a bag of vanilla sugar by my cousin and it gets used all the time for a little extra addition of flavour, texture and decoration.

 

 

APRICOT AND WALNUT MUFFINS

 

Makes about 12 muffins

 

 

1 ¾ cups (8 oz) flour

1 cup (6 oz) sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ tspn salt

½ cup oil

1 egg

1 cup apricot pulp

2/3 cup of walnuts, chopped

 

Optional: Cream cheese (for muffin filling)

Optional: Vanilla sugar (to sprinkle on top of muffins)

 

 

Sift dry ingredients into a bowl.

Mix together oil and egg.

 

Stir chopped walnuts into the flour mixture. Then add fruit pulp, and egg and oil mixture and fold ingredients together mixing lightly until the flour is just incorporated.

 

Spoon into greased muffin tins. [If using, add the cream cheese in at this stage, as a filling].

Sprinkle the top of each muffin with vanilla sugar.

 

Bake for 20 minutes at 200-225 degrees Celsius.

 

 

CHEF’S NOTES:

This recipe is officially called ‘Feijoa Muffins’. This has become one of the most used recipes Mum has. It is a very versatile recipe which Mum tinkers with to incorporate a variety of fruits and flavour combinations.

This recipe is so well used that Mum has ingeniously developed a ‘Muffin Jar’ system for preparing the ingredients…see my next blog for this wonderful and practical bit of kitchen preparedness.