Monday, May 16, 2011

Pizza Muffins



Fusion food at its best - pizza muffins! Giant ones at that. I'm never entirely sure where in the day muffins are meant to be eaten. I cooked up a batch for dinner Sunday night as we'd been out for lunch and these are a delightfully savoury number. Definitely not a breakfast treat but lunch? I think so. Warm from the oven they made a fab supper.

I am in the process of teaching myself to bake in the hope of opening a cafe that sells all manner of lovely salads and cakes to go with seriously good coffee and juices. It's harder than it seems - there is a requirement for precision that is simply not relevant for casseroles and soups, noodles and risotto. When it's a success I find it fascinating, when it fails I find it hugely frustrating partly because I hate failing and partly because I have insufficient understanding of the process to know where I went wrong and how to fix it. So I'm baking a lot and gradually improving.

In my quest for baking brilliance I bought the Australian Women's Weekly 'Bake' which is ENORMOUS and full of interesting recipes, some old familiars from my childhood like melting moments and coconut slice and some new things like this muffin recipe. I have made those as well a coffee walnut cake, an orange yoghurt cake and a spiced banana cake. Mostly the man takes them to work to share and get a little feedback. He is becoming very popular.

Pizza Muffins

Makes 6 but to make them again I would use a smaller hole pan and make 12

1 small red pepper
375g self raising flour
1 egg
310ml milk
80ml olive oil
60g coarsely grated cheddar cheese
20g finely grated Parmesan
60g seeded black olives, halved
35g sun dried tomatoes, drained and roughly chopped
2 tbspns basil, finely chopped
t tspns rosemary, sinely chopped
30g cheddar coarsely grated (extra)

Preheat oven to 200C/Gas 4. Grease a 6-hole texas (180ml) muffin pan.

Quarter the pepper, discard the seeds and membrane. Roast in a very hot oven, skin-side up, until the skin blisters and blackens. Put hot pepper into a bowl and cover tightlyw ith clingfilm for 5 minutes. Peel away the skin and then cut the flesh into strips.

Sift the flour into a large bowl. Stir in the egg, milk, oil, cheeses, olives, tomatoes and herbs. Do not over mix, a bit lumpy is fine. Spoon mixture inot pan holes, top with the slices of roasted pepper and then the extra cheese.

Bake muffins for about 25 minutes. Stand muffins in pan for 5 minutes then turn out, top-side up, onto a wire rack to cool.

These tasted great. I am beginning to enjoy baking so there will definitely be more - there's a whole chapter on muffins alone!



They are bigger than they look in this picture!

8 comments:

  1. Hi. Great post. My friends referred your blogs to me. Looks like everyone knows about it, just not me, until now. Definetely will read your other posts, too. Thank you for sharing with us. Take care.

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  2. Good luck with your dream Bron! The pizza muffins look great!

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  3. Wow! these look amazing! they're probably kinda high in calories, but so is commercial pizza lol

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  4. These look DANGEROUS, I think I might eat 3 in one go. I totally love cheesy muffins but pizza sounds even more wonderful.

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  5. Oh yes these look definitely bad in a good way - can imagine one would lead to another... I've never had much luck with muffins but these savoury goodies are tempting me : )

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  6. Hmm i just love muffins and pizza the same, i think that is the perfect recipe for me. I will try it for sure, thanks a lot for sharing with us.

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  7. Drool! They look so delicious, I love the sound of savoury muffins!

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  8. Let me assure you these really do taste as great as they look. I very sensibly gave the leftovers to the man to take to work next day. Boy did I regret that particular decision come lunch!

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