Wednesday 17 January 2018

Apple and Raisin Muffins


Although I've lost a lot of weight over the last 5 years, I'm still a few kilograms short of getting into the 'healthy' BMI range, and I know that keeping weight off is going to be a lifelong struggle for me. Acknowledging that I'm always going to have to be careful about how much I eat means I'm still interested in TV programmes about weight loss, especially if cooking and providing recipes is involved. I'm watching Tom Kerridge's  current series (Lose Weight for Good) with interest, as he's also dealing, to some extent, with the psychological barriers to losing weight, as well as claiming to produce tastier low calorie recipes, using his knowledge and experience as a Michelin starred chef.

In view of all that, I really expected to like these Apple and Raisin Muffins, even though, in general, I don't like using low-calorie sweeteners in place of sugar. In his recipe, Tom reduces the sugar and fat content by using just a little honey, low-calorie sweetener and mashed bananas. He briefly cooks the apples in caramelised honey and adds spices and roasted sesame oil to give a boost to the flavour.

As I've used it in the past, and was relatively happy with it, I decided to buy Truvia (a no-calorie sweetener made from Stevia) to use as a sweetener, as it seems more natural to me than the other forms of sweetener available. Guided by the information on the pack, I used two teaspoons of Truvia, equivalent to 6 teaspoons of sugar. Other than that, I followed the recipe exactly. One point to note about the recipe is that you need to cook the apples in the honey ahead of any other preparation, as they take a while to cool down. Apart from this stage, the recipe is fairly standard and simple to follow. The muffins produced rose well and looked really good.

Unfortunately the looks promised much more than the muffins actually delivered! I found the texture quite stodgy, and the muffins stuck really firmly to the paper cases, to the extent that quite a bit of the muffin was lost (unless you want to scrape the case for every last crumb). I could have overlooked this if the flavour had been better, but I found the muffins quite bland; I couldn't taste the spices at all, even though I could still smell them in the baked muffin. In addition to that, the presence of the sesame oil was more of a scent than a flavour - after the first mouthful, I didn't really notice it. The pieces of apple were well flavoured, but didn't make up for the blandness of the crumb.

It's difficult to assess the claim that these are low calorie - 190 calories per muffin - as it's generally only muffins that claim to be healthy (and often found on diet and healthy eating websites) that give a calorie count. The nearest basic apple muffin recipe I could find, with no claims to reduced fat or sugar, contained 250 calories per muffin, but I'm afraid, even with a 20% reduction in calorie content, these disappointing muffins weren't worth the calories. 190 calories is quite a big chunk out of a restricted calorie diet, although I think Tom was suggesting eating them for breakfast, not as an extra treat. If you do want a treat there are a lot of tastier ways of using that number of calories - most involving chocolate, I have to say!


Monday 1 January 2018

Hazelnut and Chocolate Chip Loaf

I think hazelnuts are my favourite nut to use in cakes, especially when paired with chocolate.They have a much deeper flavour than almonds, which often need almond extract added to get a really nutty taste. Chopped nuts are a good addition to cake batters, but replacing a small proportion of the flour with ground nuts adds both flavour and moistness. For many years I bought ready ground hazelnuts while on holiday in France, as they weren't readily available in the supermarkets here. The alternative, grinding your own nuts, can pose problems, as hazelnuts can become a greasy paste if overworked. So you can imagine that I was really pleased to see ground hazelnuts in Sainsbury's a few weeks ago.

This cake was made to have something fairly simple, and not too rich, on hand during the week between Christmas and New Year, for the mid-morning coffee breaks, when dipping into the leftover desserts or the chocolate boxes didn't seem quite appropriate. There's always the mince pie haters to consider, too!

Ingredients
100g softened butter
100g caster sugar
2 eggs (+ a little milk, if needed)
120g SR flour
30g ground hazelnuts
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
75g chopped plain chocolate (or chocolate chips)
30g chopped hazelnuts
1 tablespoon demerara sugar (optional)

Method
Preheat the oven to 180C, fan 160C. Line a small (1lb) loaf tin.
This is an all-in-one mix, so put everything except the chopped chocolate and hazelnuts and the demerara sugar, into a mixing bowl and beat with an electric mix until the batter is smooth and evenly blended, adding a little milk if necessary, to give a dropping consistency.
Fold in the chopped chocolate and hazelnuts, then transfer the batter to the prepared loaf tin.
Smooth the top and sprinkle with the demerara sugar, if using.
Bake for 60-70 minutes, until a test probe comes out clean.