Orange and apple muffins

Ingredients

• 1 & 1/2 cup plain flour
• 1/2 cup rolled oats
• 1/2 cup brown sugar, pacled
• 1 & 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1/2 cup shredded coconut
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup plain-tasting oil (I used Rapeseed)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
• 2 apples, grated
• 2 oranges, peeled, flesh finely chopped

Method

• Preheat the oven to 220 degrees celsius. Grease a normal-size 12 cup muffin tin or large-size 6 cup tin.
• Combine all dry ingredients (including raisins and coconut) in a large bowl – stir thoroughly.
• Crack the eggs into another bowl and beat lightly. Add the oil and vanilla and mix together until combined.
• Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and mix gently until just combined – don’t stir any more than you have to, it can make muffins tough. Finally, add the apple and orange.
• Place in the oven and bake at 220 for ten minutes, then turn it down to 180. Bake at this temperature until a skewer inserted into the middle of a muffin comes out clean – 5-7 minutes in my oven for smaller muffins, and 10 minutes for the larger one.
• Cool in the tin for 5 minutes.

About this recipe

Comparing apples with oranges was the name of the game for my fruit bowl for a while there, thanks to Wonky Box. It got me thinking – oranges are lovely in baking, but I haven’t come across many recipes where they are simply chopped up up and added to the mix. Possibly they cause too many problems curdling things, or maybe they are too sloppy? I didn’t get to the bottom of this, but I had a hunch combining them with some sturdy ingredients such as oats and coconut could help mop up any extra juice and produce something pretty hearty and edible. There are a few recipes knocking around on the internet for ‘Morning Glory Muffins‘ that include crushed pineapple. By my reckoning, this is a similar ingredient to oranges in terms of acidity and juiciness. I fiddled around with some of these and tweaked it to produce my recipe with finely chopped orange instead – no curdling, no inordinate sloppiness. The true test however has been passed – my niece and nephews gobbled them up with no sad scraps left knocking around school lunchboxes. Hopefully that is testament enough to encourage you to give these a try!