THE PERFECT BREAKFAST?

Could this be the perfect breakfast? Organic raspberries (from the box scheme), Glenisk organic Greek Yogurt, (I am so delighted I discovered this product) super healthy raspberry muffins, good coffee and a great book, eaten outside on a warm, sunny morning.

Regular readers will be aware of my ongoing mission to add more fruit and vegetables to the diet of son #2 (the veg phobic one!!), and to this end I recently bought a new cookbook (like I needed an excuse!!) Harry Eastwood's "Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache", in which she replaces the fat in recipes with vegetables (!).  I reckoned that if they tasted good, we would all be winners, and I also hoped that there would be plenty of recipes to use up the courgette glut (there are always loads of courgettes in the weekly box, and I'm the only one here who likes them!).

I have to say that this books reads very well (not the silly introductions to the recipes - the recipes themselves) and I was really looking forward to getting my teeth into it (sorry about the pun ;-{),  there are 20 recipes using courgette (roll on the glut!!).  As I am having a bit of a raspberry muffin thing at the moment, I honed in on the "Lemon, sunflower seed and blueberry muffin" recipe and then proceeded to change it!!  I replaced the lemon zest with orange (I already had two naked lemons in the fridge - didn't need any more!!) and the blueberries with raspberries (they are what I like, and I have plenty in the freezer).  I also added some lime extract (to explain the little green flecks in the muffins - clever or what!!!)

The muffins are delicious (although haven't been tried by the intended target yet!) there is no hint of the vegetables within,  the sunflower seeds make a nice change to nuts, but could easily be replaced with whatever nut you fancy.  The orange zest and raspberry are a great combination, and the texture is just about right, slightly drier than a fat filled muffin, but only very slightly, and that's a price I'm willing to pay.

Orange, Sunflower Seed and Raspberry Muffins

160g            caster sugar
3                  medium eggs
250g            finely grated courgette
zest from 1 orange
180g           white rice flour*
160g           ground almonds
2 tsp           baking powder
1/4 tsp        bread (bicarbonate of) soda
1/4 tsp       salt
60g            sunflower seeds
150g          raspberries

Line a 12 hole muffin tray with cases
Preheat oven to 180 C.

Beat the eggs and sugar until light, pale and creamy (will take about 3 mins with electric whisk)
Add the grated courgette and orange zest.
Now with a spatula add the flour, ground almonds, baking powder and bread soda and working as quickly as you can combine gently (keep in the air that you have beaten into the egg mixture).
Add the sunflower seeds and raspberries as quickly (and gently) as you can.
Divide the mixture between the muffin cases (Harry says that you get 8 muffins from this mixture, I got 12 (happy days!)
Place the muffin tray in the center of the oven - here she emphasises that it is really important not to faff about at this stage as you don't want the oven temp to decrease - you need a hot oven to "encourage them upwards as soon as they enter the heat"
Bake for approx. 30 - 35 minutes.
Remove from oven when a skewer comes out clean.
Cool on a wire rack.

*I only had 120g of rice flour so added 60g of ordinary flour.

                                            This week's basket of wonderfulness!!!