In Guildford there is a cafe that I enjoy visiting,
Caracoli, at the top of the high street in the Steamer Trading cookshop. They do try to make good coffee, not always
successfully. One thing they do very
well is their assortment of baked goods and I particularly enjoy their Carrot
Cake Muffins. It is lovely sitting on
their terrace in the sunshine thumbing through the food magazines they have
available to read.
Their Carrot Cake Muffins reminded me that when completing
my chef training back in Christchurch Polytechnic we had made a Carrot &
Kumara (Sweet Potato) Loaf. I thought
that mixture would probably make some lovely muffins also, but I needed to find
a recipe first. After searching around
the internet I wasn’t really convinced by any of the recipes I found, but on my
last visit home to New Zealand I managed to find my old recipe notebook from
when I did my chef training and there it was, the Carrot & Kumara Loaf with
Cream Cheese Icing.
The problem I now had was that they don’t have Kumara in
England, so had to use Sweet Potato instead.
They do have a purple skinned sweet potato (Bush Bok) variety here in
England, which is the closest I can find to Kumara and has a similar
consistency to Kumara, but the Golden Sweet Potato would probably work fine
also.
These muffins have a beautiful variety of textures with
chopped nuts, sultanas and the grated carrot and sweet potato and the spices
used give it a lovely inviting aroma.
These are very moreish and I could probably sit and eat them all, but
think I’d better take them into school so that I don’t scoff the lot.
Enjoy!
Carrot & Kumara (Sweet Potato) Muffins
2 eggs
120g
soft brown sugar
195ml
oil
50ml
yoghurt
65g
plain flour
65g
wholemeal flour
½ tsp
bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
1 tsp
baking powder
1 ½ tsp
cinnamon
½ tsp
nutmeg
Pinch
ground cloves
90g
grated carrots (about 1 large carrot)
90g
grated kumara/sweet potato (about 1 medium kumara)
80g
raisins or sultanas
80g
walnuts, roughly chopped
40g
almonds, roughly chopped.
1. Preheat oven to 1600
fanbake (1800 bake).
2. Beat eggs and sugar
until creamy and pale.
3. Combine the oil and
yoghurt and beat into egg mixture, slowly pouring in a steady stream.
4. Sift the dry ingredients
and add to the mix (including the wholemeal bran from the sieve) and mix well.
5. Add the grated carrot,
kumara, raisins, walnuts and almonds and stir to combine, the mixture should be
thick and tacky.
6. Line a 12 hole muffin
tin and share the mixture evenly between the 12 holes (each hole should be
about ¾ full).
7. Bake in oven for 35 minutes
until brown and spring back when lightly pressed. All to stand for 5 minutes before turning out
of the muffin tin. Cool completely then
ice with cream cheese icing.
Cream Cheese Icing
50g
softened butter
100g
cream cheese
300g
icing sugar
1 tsp
lemon juice
¼ tsp
vanilla essence
1.
Beat together the cream cheese and butter until
smooth.
2.
Beat in the icing sugar (adding small amounts at
a time to avoid creating an icing sugar cloud) and the lemon juice and vanilla
essence.
3.
Ice muffins when completely cool.
