I haven't blogged in ages, and now I have to come back with an unmitigated failure! These apricot and chocolate muffins were just nasty, the actual muffins were rubbery and the apricots therein had an unpleasant jammy texture.
When I read Chele's challenge for this month's We Should Cocoa, I feared that I would be unable to source any fresh apricots, but as luck would have it there were some delicious specimens in the shop the very next day. Murphy's law being what it is, everyone who visited over the next couple of days, spotted them, and said "you never see fresh apricots, may I take one?" and the punnet disappeared in no time!!!! Fortunately I managed to get the last of the apricots the next time I went shopping, and even more fortunately (or not when you consider the way the muffins turned out!!) I managed to hide three of them to use for the challenge.
I won't bother giving you the recipe* - why would I when this recipe is a million times better. As for the apricots - they are just so nice when fresh and ripe (and so hard to locate) that I will stick to dried or tinned for my baking in future. I have a lovely recipe for an apricot tart which uses tinned apricots - I must bake and blog it soon.
As I tell the kids, your mistakes are just as important as your successes, so I'll put this one down to furthering my culinary education! They did look nice though!!
*All I'll say is that Ms Smith isn't totally infallible.
