It’s these kind of recipes that send out the right kind of whiffs to get me in a cheery autumn mood. All I need then to make me completely happy is a look out of the window onto the trees with burning leaves against a clear autumn sky.
Preheat the oven to 180 ºC / 355 ºF conventional setting. This is a basic muffin recipe that you can use to make all kinds of combinations with fruits and nuts and spices. Its simple, first you mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl. In a separate bowl you mix all the wet ingredients. Then put the wet and dry ingredients together, but do not over mix. Fill a muffin tray with the mixture and sprinkle each heap of batter with the cinnamon/sugar mix. I use organic cinnamon that has a really intense flavor. Bake the muffins for 20 minutes (depending on your oven) and leave to cool on a tray. Or better: eat warm from the oven, but do not burn yourself on the pieces of apple or cranberries, they tend to be hot longer because they contain more water.
Tip: Make sure your ingredients, including your spices, are fresh. Like ground coffee, ground spices also lose their intensity very quickly. You can grate cinnamon yourself with a Microplane grater.
I also tried these muffins with speculaas spices and zwetschgen /quetsch jam (a sort of tangy plum) I brought home from France. Also very nice and seasonal for our ‘Sinterklaas’ feast.
I so sympathise with you. I think the molds would work better if you baked 100 times, one batch after another, but we also bake the cookies only a few times a year during the season. It’s probably not enough to get these cookie molds really going. I use some extra extra rice flour and that helps, but still I have to confess they try to hang on to that mold so I always have to help them along. How different are my new Nordic Ware bundt pans..the cakes just shoot out!
I know it’s an old post but I was looking for a good recipe to use my pack of speculaas kruiden I bought in The Netherlands recently. It came with a lould and I agree wholeheartedly with you about the light swearing. I made a dozen with the mould to prove I CAN do it, and the rest with a biscuit cutter.
Sounds like a good plan. How long will you be in Amsterdam for?
Oh Marieke, thanks for your wishes, but as far as I am living in a student apartment where there is no oven – a cooker alone, thank you very much – I have a suspicion I will have to make do with stovetop improvisations. 🙂 Good Lord, this road of possibilities remains broad.
Time permitting, it would be so lovely if we meet (I believe I mentioned ealier that I’m in Amsterdam; studying) over a cup of hot chocolate or coffee to discuss, well, chocolate and coffee and other life pleasantries. 🙂 Let me hear from you on this one.
I wish you will have your very own oven very soon!
But for this, we definitely need a bigger garden.
Oh, if I only had an oven in my small shared kitchen over here. 🙂 And still, your description does its own trick and sends me into that certain-autumn-day-mood, too! And you know what, thank you for this!