Alongside the lush new greens growing in  my garden are some productive older residents including  damson, apple, fig and plum trees. Most of the fruit bounty from the trees is taken care of between eating, passing on to friends and freezing (with just enough sugar). It’s the damsons that need a bit more thought; they are delicious in their own way, but not really all that good eaten au naturel.  

The first batch of purple blue damsons were made into a tub of decadent full fat, cream and sugar ice-cream, courtesy of Nigel Slater. The second batch were destined for Madalene’s Bullace and Conference Pear Breakfast Muffins. And so it turned out were the third batch.  Now before I get on to talking about the muffins, if you haven’t seen it already you should take a look at Madalene’s blog, The British Larder. Her photography is mouth-watering and her recipes are always inspiring me to try out more traditional British produce such as cobnuts, bullace and greengages.

This recipe produces wholesome, unpretentious muffins – the sort you’d have for breakfast or to tide you over until a late dinner.  And there are hidden treasures within the muffins; the damson pieces form little crimson, caramelised nuggets and the cereal flakes become chewy and malty.

My version has a few differences to Madalene’s including vegetable oil (also known as rapeseed or canola oil) for more monounsaturated fats, yogurt with a splash of milk in place of buttermilk (which I can never find to buy), and a touch of allspice (for that autumnal feel).  We don’t tend to have bran flakes in stock so my muffins use an unsweetened cereal flake made from a combination of buckwheat and rice.  Don’t think you can’t try the recipe without access to a supply of damsons either – I’m confident plums would work in their place.

If you’re in the mood for more baking ideas check out this earlier post on How to Make a Healthier Muffin.

We’ve just spent a few days in the glorious highlands of Scotland.  Me with my camera and the triathlete with his bike, taking part in the Caledonian Etape.  Or trying to anyway; the whole weekend turned out to be rather more eventful than planned when somebody sabotaged the event by scattering carpet tacks across the route, possibly in protest at the road closures put in place for the event (scheduled to last an incredibly inconvenient three whole hours).

The Scots as it turns out have a whole vocabulary to describe rain.  After a dreich day, the rain upgraded its status to stotting down. The weather in England hasn’t been much better since we got back from our break (grey and distinctly chilly) so this seems an opportune time to share a crumble recipe.

I’ve dallied with ‘healthier fats’ in crumbles, but haven’t yet come up with a satisfactory recipe (oils seem to produce a dish more rubble than crumble).  A compromise is to accompany the butter with a high fruit to topping ratio, not too much sugar and plenty of good stuff in the topping.  Wholemeal spelt flour, whole oats plus roughly chopped hazelnuts for texture.  Spelt flour has a toasty, nutty flavour and is my current favourite standby flour for all but the most serious of baking recipes.  (Shopping note: as with the unmilled spelt grains, spelt flour comes in wholegrain and white varieties. Check the label to see which sort you are getting).

Our crumble accompaniment tends to start from luxurious, fresh vanilla custard on the first day to a more austere, sour note like natural yogurt or half-fat creme fraiche for the leftovers.

Other recipes featuring oats, plums and spelt
Baked plums with cinnamon and honey
Fig and plum porridge
Butternut squash, oat and ginger cake bites
Summery herb, salmon and spelt salad
Rhubarb and Ginger Thickie

The photo at the top of this post is from Queen’s View, reputably the most photographed view in Perthshire and a favourite of Queen Victoria.

This pavlova is a serious pudding, not a health food.  The meringue is fudgy with brown sugar.  The fruit topping is vanilla and honey scented and textured with fig seeds.  The cream layer is a blend of whipped cream and greek yogurt. It’s really good though, so I thought you wouldn’t mind the brief deviation from all that nutritiousness.

The pavlova was supposed to be the caramel apple pavlova from the Riverford Farm cookbook.  We had friends coming to dinner and I promised myself that I’d stick to the recipe, just this once.  And then when I made the meringue the night before the dinner I figured swapping in a little bit of muscovado sugar couldn’t hurt, but that I’d stick to the plan with the caramel apple topping. And then our friends had to cancel because of the heavy snow we’ve had…

Inspired among other recipes by Stonesoup’s version of Maggie Beer’s fig pavlova I made a winter fruit compote with plums and dried figs, spiced with vanilla, cinnamon, star anise and honey.  A compote based on dried and (gasp!) canned fruit neatly skirts round the problem of the lacklustre fruit available in the UK at this time of year and gives the whole dish a decidedly seasonal feel.  You can use fresh fruit by all means but just think about it; nutritionally you’re not really missing out, it is environmentally sound at this time of year and you won’t be infuriated by fruit that doesn’t ripen in time for your guests.  Mixing whipped cream with a helping of lower-in-fat greek yogurt is a worthwhile twist that gives a contrasting sour note in the middle of all that sweetness.

Frosting and icing
Most of the time my muffins remain topless, but just occasionally a bit of decoration is called for.  A quick, if slightly rustic looking topping is a very thin glaze of icing sugar flavoured with lemon, lime or orange juice.  This isn’t going to add many extra calories at all, though your dentist may not approve.   A far plusher topping is a frosting based on flavoured, low-fat cream cheese.  I frost or ice half of my muffins to share and leave half unadorned to eat later in the week or stash away in the freezer.  Any unfrosted homemade fruity muffins make a great “grab and go” portable breakfast, just take one out of the freezer the night before and it will be ready to eat first thing.

These tweaks should be suitable for experimenting on any muffin recipe of your choice.  I have also put all of the ideas together in one recipe for mango, lime and ginger muffins with a lime cream cheese frosting.

(I couldn’t resist just one picture from my trip to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show on Friday.  There are many more on my Flickr photostream if any of you are horticulturally minded!).

Elsewhere on Mostly Eating
More inspiration for healthy baking, this time with vegetables – Butternut squash, oat and ginger cake bites
Five clever ideas for healthy recipe substitutions includes two baking tips

Muffins galore!
Muffin recipes elsewhere that use similar ideas
Wendy’s Moist Bran Muffins
Wholewheat Apple Muffins from Smitten Kitchen
Jamie Oliver’s Butternut Squash Muffins with a frosty top
Lemon Ginger Muffins from Elise
Kathryn’s Pear, Maple and Walnut Muffins

We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
I hope you all have a lovely time over the Christmas break. We will be off up North in a couple of days to see both of our families and before that I’m planning a leisurely couple of days wrapping presents and drinking mulled wine. For alongside this I have already made a batch of my favourite Christmas baking treat; sticky golden syrup flapjacks warmed up with a seasonal dollop of mincemeat and a snifter of rum. This recipe is as easy as baking gets and but will still fill your house with a satisfying dose of spicy, fruity Christmas scent.

I tried nutritionify-ing this recipe by leaving out a bit of the butter and golden syrup, but it told me in no uncertain terms that this was not what Christmas cookery was all about by promptly falling apart. I present here the full fat, full sugar, full syrup version to enjoy (normal service will be resumed in January!).

There’s one question that I need to get out of the way quickly before my lovely husband gets any ideas. Yes, these little cakes do have vegetable in them, but no, they don’t count as a portion of veg. I hope I haven’t upset anyone else with that revelation? A portion of veggies you see needs to be at least within shouting distance of 80g, and a slice of carrot cake or any of its culinary siblings come in nowhere near that, not even nutritionist Kathryn’s Chocolate and Beetroot cake or Heidi’s Special Zucchini Bread. These little squash bites are in the same boat – a meagre 12.5g of squash per cake. But don’t worry, it is not so much what you are putting in that is important here, it is what the squash lets you leave out. Here’s the low down on why these are worth firing up the oven:

• Crystallised ginger and butternut squash are the perfect autumn flavour combo
• Roasted butternut squash provides plenty of moisture leaving the recipe to be naturally low fat
• Flour is OK (unless you have coeliac disease), especially wholemeal, but just doesn’t do as much good stuff for you as oats. This recipe is loosely based on the kind of proportions you would use to make muffins but skips half of the flour in favour of low GI, cholesterol busting oats.
• There’s no butter or marg in here, just two tablespoons of rapeseed oil to make twenty cakes. Rapeseed oil is the one also known as vegetable oil or canola and is predominantly monounsaturated like olive oil (indeed you could use a mild olive oil instead if you prefer).
• You won’t miss the butter, I promise, because there are also a handful of buttery macadamia nuts in there.

These are an every day sorta cake. They aren’t particularly pretty or delicate (meaning that you can dunk them in your tea), but they are as nutritionally well balanced as you can expect a cake to be. Like most low fat cakes they don’t keep for too long but this works in their favour – I keep a batch in the freezer and when I fancy something sweet with my tea I take one of these out at breakfast and it is ready to eat by coffee break.
This is an entirely self-invented recipe and I’m not a baking expert by any means; feel free to tweak the recipe and report back on any improvements you come up with! I’m sure you can think of plenty of things to do with the rest of the butternut squash but if not pop it into the freezer for now (I have an easy savoury recipe to use the rest on its way).

My foray into vegetable-based baking coincides with a beta carotene theme for regular blogging event Sugar High Friday so I thought I would take the opportunity to join those guys for a change (the event is hosted this time around by Leslie at Definitely Not Martha). It sounds good so I will put a link to the round-up here when it appears.