Orange Breakfast Muffins
If you’re going to attempt anything other than a bowl of cereal for an ordinary weekday breakfast, then muffins are the best bet. They are the easiest things to make, not least because the laziest of stirring is what’s required. The truth is that a heavy, lumpy batter makes for the lightest muffin. Having said that—no homemade muffin is ever going to be as risen and aeratedly humped as a factory-produced one, nor should it be. The point is a muffin is not a cake. I presume anyway that they were originally devised to be eaten in much the same way as the yeasted version, that’s to say as a form of sweet, tender roll with jam. And that’s exactly how I eat these. Split them while still warm and, mouthful by mouthful, smear with the best unsalted butter you can find, adding as you want, marmalade, jam or amber, liquid-light honey.
Notes12-cup muffin pan lined with 12 paper baking cups
Makes12
Cooking Methodbaking
CostInexpensive
Total Timeunder 1 hour
Kid FriendlyYes
OccasionBuffet, Family Get-together
Recipe Courseside dish
Mealbreakfast, brunch, snack, tea
Taste and Texturefruity, sweet
Type of Dishbread, muffins, quickbreads
Ingredients
- 6 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 1 2/3 cups self-rising flour
- 2 tablespoons ground almonds
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ cup sugar
- zest of 1 orange
- 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed orange juice
- 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon whole milk
- 1 egg
Instructions
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Preheat the oven to 400°F.
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Melt the butter and set aside. Combine the flour, ground almonds, baking soda, baking powder, sugar and orange zest in a large bowl. Measure the orange juice and milk into a pitcher and whisk in the egg and then the cooled, melted butter. Now pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients, mixing with a fork as you go. The batter will be lumpy but that’s as it should be: you want everything to be no more than barely combined. The whole point of muffin mixture is that it must never be overworked.
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Spoon out the mixture equally into the muffin cups and cook for 20 minutes. Remove, in their paper baking cups, to a wire rack and let cool slightly (but not completely) before devouring.
2002 Nigella Lawson
