Apple and Cinnamon Muffins

Did you all have a lovely weekend? My weekend was nice but busy around the house. Dare I mention it but with Christmas around the corner I like to give the house a good de-cluttering and sort out before the madness begins. Then I have free time to bake, cook and enjoy the festive season; of course the daily housework will always be there! So our weekend kicked off the start of our autumn clean up project. I did however manage to find some time to get into my kitchen for a spot of baking and baked these wonderful Apple and Cinnamon Muffins from Nigella Kitchen. The smell of these muffins while baking was divine and they reminded me of all the wonderful xmas scents to come. As I expected these muffins were beautifully moist from the apple chunks and had so much flavour and texture. Hubby and I both agreed these muffins are definitely a must bake but you should seriously try them served as a pudding with lashings of custard, we did!

Apple and Cinnamon Muffins

Makes 12 (I ended up with 18)

Ingredients
2 eating apples
250g plain flour (or spelt flour)
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp ground cinnamon
125g light brown sugar, plus 4 tsp for sprinkling
125ml honey
60ml runny natural yoghurt
125ml flavourless vegetable oil
2 eggs
75g natural (unblanched) almonds

Preheat the oven to 200oC/180oC fan oven/gas mark 6 and line your muffin tin with papers.

Peel and core the apples, then chop into small dice (about 1cm) and put them to one side.

Measure the flour, baking powder and 1 tsp of the ground cinnamon into a bowl.

Whisk together the 125g brown sugar, the honey, yoghurt, vegetable oil and eggs in another bowl or jug.

Chop the almonds roughly and add half of them to the flour mixture, and put the other half into a small bowl with the second tsp of ground cinnamon and the 4 extra tsp brown sugar. This will make the topping for the muffins.

Now fold the wet ingredients into the dry. Add the chopped apple, and stir to combine but don’t over mix.

Spoon this bumpy batter into the muffin papers, then sprinkle the rubbly topping mixture over them.

Pop the tin into the prepared oven, and bake for about 20 minutes, by which time they will have risen and become golden.

Take the tin out of the oven and let it stand for about 5 minutes before gingerly taking out the muffins and placing them on a wire cooling rack.