Whole Mandarin Muffins with Mandarin Curd

As anyone who knows me would be aware...I am not a very adventurous or terribly successful cook. I have no idea why but I seemed to have missed out on cooking lessons while I was growing up despite my mother being an excellent cook. Perhaps I was too busy or wasn't interested or perhaps because I was the youngest child and there was 11 years difference between myself and the eldest she just thought it was quicker and easier do all the cooking herself. I didn't really learn any of the 'keeping a home' tips from either of my grandmothers either who were both fairly elderly when I was born or at least it seemed that way to me as a child. However, I have been trying out a few new recipes lately and this week I made a version of Rhonda's Whole Orange Muffins without the sugar.

As I had recently clicked on a link from the Down to Earth Forums to a site featuring these very delicious looking Lemon Curd Filled Muffins and as we have a tree full of mandarins, I wondered if I could replace both the oranges in Rhonda's muffins with mandarins and add mandarin curd instead of the lemon curd.  

Our mandarins are really, really small this year and very dry so I picked more than the recipe called for to get the required amount of juice but probably went a bit overboard with the amount of skin I used and will cut that back the next time if I happen to make these again. 

Firstly I made the mandarin curd with

• 3 large eggs
• 6  or so Mandarins
•  1/2 cup Dextrose
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature, cut into small pieces

 

You can find the original recipe and the instructions here . This made one 170gram mustard jar as well as one 380gram vegemite jar. I know the photos aren't that wonderful but I was in a bit of a tizz trying to get this made with all the distractions I had that day and there was no time for making things look 'food blog worthy' if you get my drift.  There was a bit more curd in that jar on the right when it was cooked but it was lunch time by then and.....;-)

So...after the curd was made and cooled and mum's taxi had come home once again, I made the mandarin muffins using Rhonda's Whole Orange Muffins recipe and replaced the sugar with dextrose and one cup of white flour with a cup of wholemeal flour.

Recipe:

The recipe uses one washed orange cut into quarters but I added a few mandarins as ours were small and dry as I mentioned
I juiced enough mandarins to produce 80 mls of juice as that was how much one of our oranges made
2 medium eggs
1/2 cup melted butter
1/2 cup dextrose
1 cup Plain flour and one cup SR flour ~sifted
1 teaspoon baking powder

Method:

Turn the oven onto  180C

 Place the mandarins and juice in a food processor until mashed
Add the butter, eggs and dextrose and process again for a minute or so
Pour the mixture into the bowl containing the flour and baking powder and gently mix it into the flour until just combined but don't over mix.
Add the batter to a muffin tin. As I was adding the mandarin curd to each muffin as in this recipe which said to fill each muffin hole half way then add 1/2 Tablespoon curd, press it gently into the batter then top it with extra batter I did that.
Cook until cooked through and golden brown

 The verdict? The muffins themselves were very nice even though I ate the first one when it was just out of the oven, still red hot and nearly burnt my mouth, I would stick to the original Lemon Curd Filled Muffins if you want to add the curd to the middle although you could probably replace the lemon curd with mandarin curd. The curd in mine seemed to get absorbed into the batter although you can see a little of it in the photo. The recipes are quite different but it was worth experimenting and they were all eaten within 24 hours anyway so they must have tasted alright. I was happy with the muffins so will cook them again minus the curd.

While writing about recent experiments...

 

 ...the 6 weeks of curing time for the Violet Soap is just about up and I tried it out the other day and it lathers up beautifully so it looks like that was a success although it did lose the lavender scent as I didn't use enough essential oil obviously. 

Also the Nettle Soap has lost a little of its colour as I expected but thankfully the dreadful smell has gone which was the interaction of the nettle with the lye. I will take a photo of the soap when the six weeks is up as I think a few readers were interested. 

I was cutting up a red cabbage today and wondered if I could get pink soap if I boiled it up using the Harvesting Colour method Costa used on Gardening Australia. You might be able to download the video here if you are interested in having a look after reading the factsheet. On second thought though, perhaps I will give it a miss as I don't think the menfolk will like smelling like a cabbage after their showers ;-)

It has started raining here and has turned cold once again so I am off to rug up a little. Have a great weekend everyone.