It seems to have been a long time since I wrote a recipe post, mainly due to the fact that I simply haven’t had a proper kitchen to cook in for the last couple of months (and when I have, the limited resources have usually meant cooking simple pasta dishes). However, I’m not complaining, as this has meant that I’ve gotten to eat out. A lot.
Now that I have my own place for the month of November in Amsterdam, as well as trying out the local delicacies, I’m also excited to have a ridiculously well-stocked kitchen at my disposal (luckily for me the lady who owns the apartment loves to bake, so the supplies are endless). And after I spotted something in the cupboards which I have long sought after – silicone muffin trays – I knew that muffins should be one of the first things I made.
Ever since I purchased Nigella Lawson’s “How To Be A Domestic Goddess”, I have dreamt of baking the baklava muffin recipe. I’m not sure why, as at that time I had only ever had baklava a couple of times in my life, but the thought of muffins oozing with chopped nuts, sugar and honey simply appealed to me. This was then heightened after eating some delicious baklava in Belgrade.
Due to my ineptitude with the scales in the kitchen, my quantities for the topping mixture were slightly off, although in the end this turned out to be no bad thing, it just meant that I had too much mixture than the recipe called for. I also couldn’t track down buttermilk in the local supermarket, so instead opted for the yogurt/milk mixture which seemed to have no negative effect on the mixture.
I have noticed in the past that Nigella’s muffin recipes tend to be a little on the scant size – I think she usually means for bakers to use small bun tins as opposed to muffin tins, as I never seem to have enough mixture to make 12, as she suggests it should. Knowing this ahead of time, I planned to only make 6 larger muffins (and as there are only two of us, it probably would’ve been greedy to make 12 anyway!).
I do think that I put too much of the mixture in each hole at first, which meant that the first layer of sugar and nuts was a little to close to the top of the muffin when cooked, but it tasted delicious all the same. I drizzled a little honey on top of the muffins while they were still warm in the tray, and it melted into the cake and added to the stickiness.
Don’t fool yourself into thinking that these muffins taste exactly as baklava does, but they are a wonderful take on the tasty treat and I would definitely make them again, although place less of the mixture in each of the cases before I add the first layer of nuts. They were light and fluffy and not heavy as some shop-bought muffins can be. They were also wonderful the next day smothered in some warm vanilla custard.
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