The little Sugar Pie pumpkin climbing the fence.

It doesn't matter much which sort of pumpkin or squash you've got. Last time I made them using Cucurbita pepo var. styriaca, the oil pumpkin (seen above, the green-striped pumpkin).


Pumpkin cardamom muffins

200g flour
1 tsp baking powder
1g salt
1 tsp ground cardamom
2 tsp chopped orange zest
175g sugar
100g egg
200g pumpkin purée (either made by a steaming and puréeing or straining and mashing the pumpkin after boiling)
50ml oil
80g cranberries or cowberries

pumpkin seeds, to sprinkle on top

Whisk eggs until homogeneous and slightly bubbly. Add sugar and the pumpkin purée. Mix in orange zest, cranberries and oil.

In another bowl sift flour with baking powder, cardamom and salt.
Add half of the flour to pumpkin mixture and stir well. Then add the rest of the flour and stir until all flour is just mixed in but not super smooth.

Divide batter between muffin tins. Nine regular size or six jumbo size.

Sprinkle some seeds on top and pop into a 210C oven. Then lower the temperature to 180C and bake for about 25 minutes.

I have many cookbooks, right. And one of the newer books is "Bouchon Bakery".

The recipe for blueberry muffins looked very interesting since it required resting the dough overnight. I've never done that with muffin batter before, only with yeast dough or madeleine batter. Naturally I had to try it out.

I did leave out a couple of things like molasses and honey. The thing was already sweet enough, besides I'm not a fan of molasses.

I did use however those large and fleshy foreign blueberries from the store, as that's what are commonly used in the States. But next time I would stick to the smaller European wild berries because I thought there wasn't enough blueberry flavour.

The overall result was satisfying, nice crumb, pretty domes, the mouthfeel was more cakey than crumbly.
I'm adding this to my list of "keepers".



Blueberry muffins


120g wild blueberries or bilberries
130g flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
a pinch of salt
65g butter
65g sugar
50g egg (that's one small egg)
1 tsp vanilla paste
60ml kefir or buttermilk

Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
Cream butter with sugar. Add the egg and mix well. Now add half of the flour mixture, combine, add the buttermilk and the rest of the flour. Mix well.
Cover and let sit in the refrigerator overnight.

Crumble topping:
20g flour, 20g ground almonds, 20g butter, 20g sugar and a pinch of salt.
Rub everything together to a grainy/sandy consistency.

About an hour before baking take the batter out of the fridge. Turn your oven onto 220C.
Mix berries into the batter and divide it between six regular size muffin cups. Sprinkle the crumbs on top and slip into the oven. Lower the temperature to 165C.
Bake for about 30 minutes.

These four photographs were published in Oma Maitse, January issue.

The meringue roll with blackcurrant mousse is very chic and possibly a dinner party favourite. Tropezienne is tasty and comforting, not very difficult but can be flat and dry when overbaked.

Instead I will share the recipe for the jammy muffins. These are dead simple, quick and really good.

I've made these three times now, twice with cowberry jam but last week I used sour cherry jam.
Blackcurrant or cranberry would be good too.


Jammy muffins


2 large eggs
3 tbsp milk
80g sugar
80g melted butter
120g flour
1 heaped tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
60 to 90ml cowberry jam

Whisk eggs with sugar, add milk and butter, mix through.
Sieve flour and baking powder into a bowl, add salt and cardamom.
Pour liquid ingredients into the flour mixture and combine.
Pour batter into a normal size 6 hole muffin tin. Drop a dessertspoon of jam in the middle of each dough pool.


Bake at 190C for 10 minutes, then turn the heat down to 160C and bake for 15 more minutes.