Marmalade and ginger muffins

A few people have said to me recently that they miss receiving recipes and musings from ‘aviewfrommykitchen’, so I thought perhaps it was time to dust off the laptop and post something delicious. I have been posting stuff on Instagram and there are quite a few recipes and ideas on my page if you haven’t already spotted them – the handle is the same: @aviewfrommykitchen

As we are travelling back to Turkey next week and I know that our Seville orange trees will be groaning with fruit, just begging to be made into marmalade, I thought a marmalade-related recipe might be timely.

This is such an easy recipe, as you just melt a few things in a saucepan, then add a few dried things, with the eggs going in last, so that they can’t scramble in the heat. I invented this recipe to use up some marmalade which had crystallised in the fridge – once melted, it was perfectly good. The semolina gives the muffins a really satisfying crunch, but if you want to make these and you don’t happen to have any in the cupboard, just replace with more flour. As self-raising flour is as rare as hen’s teeth in Kaş these days, you can just use plain flour – for each 150g flour (obviously include the semolina in the weight too, if you are using that), add two flat teaspoons baking powder (look for kızartma tozu – the stuff in the little paper packets, sold next to the yeast and vanilla – baking soda or karbonat is an entirely different thing, which you’ll find with the herbs and spices. Obviously.)

Once the muffins are baked, they are glazed with more marmalade to give them a deliciously sticky topping. You can use any sort of marmalade – I used a homemade mixed fruit version, containing pink grapefruit, which gave the muffins a pleasing bitter note. Feel free to swap the pistachios and almonds for other nuts or seeds – whatever you have in your cupboard.

Marmalade and ginger muffins
Makes 12
You will need a 12-cup muffin tin, lined

250g self-raising flour
50g semolina
½ teaspoon baking powder
150g Demerara or other light brown sugar
170g marmalade, plus 2 tablespoons extra for glaze
120g butter
100ml milk
2 tablespoons yoghurt
2 eggs
40g each chopped almonds and pistachios, plus a few for topping
2 tablespoons finely chopped crystallised ginger*, plus a little extra for topping

1. Heat the oven to 190°C fan.

2. Put the marmalade, sugar and butter in a saucepan large enough to hold all of the ingredients, and melt over a medium heat until the sugar and marmalade have completely dissolved. Remove from the heat and whisk in the milk and yoghurt.

3. Stir in the flour and semolina until just combined, then whisk in the eggs, along with the nuts and ginger.

4. Divide between the lined muffin cups and sprinkle a little extra ginger and a few chopped nuts onto the top of each muffin.

5. Bake for approximately 25-30 minutes, until the muffins are a deep golden brown and feel just firm to the touch – they will firm up a little more as they cool. Leave to cool in the tin for five minutes, then transfer to a wire rack. Melt the extra marmalade, either in the microwave or in a small saucepan (a Turkish coffee pan is your friend here), then brush each muffin with a little glaze.

*For anyone baking this recipe in Kaş, the easiest (and by far the cheapest) place to source the crystallised ginger is Muhtar supermarket, but you will also find it on the spice stall in the Friday market and in the spice shop on the corner behind the PTT.

Vegan banana bread with candied walnut topping

Vegan banana bread (600 x 356) resizedI am fully stocked with flour again – a box containing five large bags of organic plain flour from the Cotswold Flour Mill arrived on my doorstep a few days ago. I am not intentionally stockpiling, but they are struggling with the sheer volume of orders, so are currently only delivering if you buy the entire box. Hopefully it will last me until the shops return to normal, whenever that will be. Continue reading “Vegan banana bread with candied walnut topping”

Lemon poppy seed drizzle loaf

IMG_3945Appalling dearth of recipes appearing on this site at the moment – tsk tsk. I’ve been busy doing other things and also trying not to eat too many cakes and muffins, bearing in mind that shorts season is just around the corner. Also, we had a wonderful trip to South Africa last month, where we visited Amakhala Game Reserve in the Eastern Cape – we had a great time getting up at 5am (eek!) and spotting everything from groups of  beautiful nyala antelope, who visited our terrace every morning, to elephants, giraffes, zebras and a lioness with her three newly-minted cubs. Continue reading “Lemon poppy seed drizzle loaf”

Lemon semolina cake with rosemary drizzle

IMG_3880I know I am back home in Turkey because a) I have to have a shower or throw myself into the pool every time I’ve completed even the least arduous of chores, owing to looming heat exhaustion, and b) when I bent to pick up a towel that had blown down from the line, I realised I also seemed to be holding on to a viper. Ooops. That tends not to happen in Cornwall, though I am sure there is a first time for everything.

Anyway, said viper was not in the best of health and I lived to tell the tale – AGAIN – this would be about the eleventy-twentieth time I have picked up something that I didn’t intend to. Despite rescuing said asp on the long-handled dustpan and brush we keep for this very task, and taking him to a ‘safe place’ in the long grass across the road, he didn’t make it in the end. I suspect there had already been some foul play on the part of one of our moggies before the poor thing took refuge beneath the fallen towel. Continue reading “Lemon semolina cake with rosemary drizzle”

Rhubarb & ginger tray-bake

IMG_3768 (2).jpgOne of the most pleasing things about being back in the UK is the sheer variety of fruit and vegetables on offer. Fourteen years without summer treats like rhubarb, gooseberries and raspberries have served to remind me how lucky we are in this country to have such an amiable climate – we tried many times to grow rhubarb in Turkey, but once June came along, it literally cooked in the ground. Continue reading “Rhubarb & ginger tray-bake”

Carrot & ginger muffins, and the delights of the Bodrum Bergamot

IMG_3645Weather report: extremely grumpy. Violent flashes, thunderous bangs, strong winds, torrential rain and a whole crop of waterspouts. For Pete’s sake people, we’re in the Mediterranean, it’s supposed to be sunny. The weather has forgotten how to behave. Continue reading “Carrot & ginger muffins, and the delights of the Bodrum Bergamot”

All-in-one banana drizzle cake

IMG_3241Is it just our household that only ever seems to have black bananas? I am sure they are yellow when I buy them (or green, even) but by the time I glance at them again, they look as though they are suffering from terminal black spot.

Over the years, I have made squillions of variations of banana bread, all pretty straightforward, but I think this one is hands-down the easiest. As long as your bananas are really soft, you just chuck everything into the bowl at the same time and give it a vigorous thrashing with a wooden spoon (if your bananas need a bit of help, mash them well with a fork first or just mix the cake in a food processor). Continue reading “All-in-one banana drizzle cake”

Gluten-free berry almond torte

IMG_3192When is a cake a cake and when is it a torte? Sachertorte is the one that everyone knows, and it turns out that ‘torte’ is simply a German word for ‘cake’, though Sachertorte originated in Vienna of course.

It seems that if a cake contains luxury ingredients, such as ground nuts and fresh fruit, rather than just flour, butter, eggs and sugar, then it may well be a torte. Tortes also tend to be more dense in texture and less tall than their cakey cousins, so I’ve decided today’s offering qualifies on all counts. It contains ground almonds and fresh fruit, it has a deliciously fudgy texture, redolent of marzipan, it is under-tall and it looks pretty posh, even though it is extremely simple to make. Continue reading “Gluten-free berry almond torte”

Fruity banana bread (vegan)

IMG_3013We’ve been back in Cornwall for three weeks and, ahem, I believe there have been no blog posts during that time. We’ve been busy trying to get the house finished and there has also been the lure of the unusually fabulous British weather, so we thought we’d squeeze in some walks and see a few more places before the mass arrival of tourists when the school holidays start in a couple of weeks time.

On the house front, we are nearly there – it has been almost a year since we started, but we are delighted with the result. We are far from tidy and there are plenty of finishing touches to do (like swapping the Turkish carpet in our living room, which doesn’t remotely complement the furniture, for the one that is currently underneath the dining table in our  house in Turkey – despite our best efforts, it was too big to go in our largest suitcase, so ended up being left for our next visit). Continue reading “Fruity banana bread (vegan)”

Jenny’s cake (blackberry & apple teacake)

IMG_2717.jpgIt’s been an eventful few days. Never mind the John Le Carré-style Salisbury poisonings, the Tillerson firing and the prospect of Kim and ‘The Donald’ planning a love-in, we are much too busy in Cornwall being up to our withers in ‘Cream-Tea-Gate’ to worry about any of that malarkey.

If you’re not already up to speed with the news story of the week, the National Trust managed to completely outrage the entire county of Cornwall over the weekend with an advert for its Mother’s Day cream teas at the Lanhydrock Estate. Continue reading “Jenny’s cake (blackberry & apple teacake)”