Sunday, August 8, 2010

Carrot almond muffins with creme fraiche topping

I was waiting to add a photo, but I can't find the camera cable. I hope it shows up before we go on holiday! This is today's baking effort. A Facebook friend commented that it sounds almost healthy - I don't know, there's plenty of sugar and fat, but also carrots, nuts, and eggs for protein ;) And two out of three of my kids don't normally eat carrots ...

Ingredients
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Melted butter, to grease (I use good quality silicone bakeware, so I didn't grease]
5 large eggs, separated
170g raw sugar [you could use less if you're happy with a less sweet muffin]
2 tsp finely grated orange rind [just one orange, for simplicity's sake]
3 medium carrots, finely grated [I just gave them a scrub and left the skin on, but I buy organic carrots]
200g almond meal
100g self-raising flour, sifted

About 200g creme fraiche [i.e. what was left in the tub after making mushroom stroganoff the other night]
1 tbsp icing sugar
squeeze of fresh orange juice

Method
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Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Prepare muffin trays - this mix made 14 for me, so I used two individual molds as well as a 12-cup muffin tray.

For Thermomix users, I grated the carrots first, 10 seconds or so on speed 7, rinsed and dried the bowl, and then grated the orange rind. If you're also making your own almond meal, be sure and do that before you start.

Place yolks, sugar & rind in a bowl or mixer and beat until thick & creamy (Thermomix: about 30 seconds on speed 4/5 with butterfly). Add carrot, flour and almond meal, and stir (Thermomix: about 40 seconds on speed 2, reverse).

Place egg whites in a bowl and beat until soft peaks form. If you're doing this in the Thermomix, you'll need to put the mix in another bowl, clean the TMX bowl and make sure it's dry before whipping the egg whites. I was lazy and didn't dry very carefully, so my whites didn't really whip - the recipe still worked.

Fold the egg white into the carrot mixture in two batches. Pour into muffin pans and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until skewer comes out clean (this is a moist muffin, though, so it won't be completely dry).

To make the creme fraiche topping, whip all ingredients together until soft peaks form. I didn't whip mine thick enough to be an icing as such, I only intended to dollop it over the top like whipped cream.

Based on this recipe.

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