Courgette and Lime Muffins

with added peach - a variation for AlphaBakes.

We came back from a few days in Normandy to find the garden running riot in the unexpected warmth of a late summer. I don't mind excess runner beans, as they can be frozen, but courgettes which are almost marrow-sized need a bit of lateral thinking to use them up. Time for courgettes in a bake, I thought - something I've been meaning to try for ages.

After searching around, and realising that nearly all the recipes were just variations of carrot cake - with similar additions and flavourings - I settled on this recipe, from goodtoknow.co.uk,  for courgette and lime muffins, which sounded fresh and summery and different to most of the recipes I'd looked at. I decided I wouldn't add the frosting - it seems superfluous for muffins!

At this point I thought of the blogging baking challenges that I usually take part in every month - could these muffins somehow be used for one of them? Fresh, summery flavours spoke to me of fresh fruit, and I just happened to have a bowl of French peaches which were rapidly ripening. I decided to add a slice of peach to some of the muffins, and enter them into the AlphaBakes challenge, which this month is featuring the letter P. I cut a peach into 8 wedges and added a slice to the top of 8 of the 12 muffins, before baking. As my courgettes were so large, I quartered one lengthways and removed the centre seedy area, before grating. Other than this, I followed the recipe exactly.

These were really pretty and tasted good too! The lime zest and green skin from the courgettes flecked the crumb with green, although the courgettes didn't seem to add anything to the flavour. In the muffins with added peach slices, the flavours of peach and lime blended together surprisingly well. The muffins with the peach slices didn't rise as evenly as the plain muffins, but it was good to eat a large chunk of peach in the muffin - and I think adding small chunks of fruit might have made the batter too wet. I was also impressed by how light these muffins were - either I'm getting better at making muffins, or better at choosing recipes!

The AlphaBakes Challenge is a monthly baking challenge to make something  featuring a randomly chosen letter - this can be part of the name of the product or one of the major ingredients. It is hosted jointly by Caroline, from Caroline Makes, and Ros from The More Than Occasional Baker, who take turns to generate a random letter and collate the entries. This month Caroline picked the letter P.