James and I spent the last day of our holiday yesterday wandering around the beautiful Knightshayes estate in Devon; picnicking on the lawn, spying on baby cows and just generally enjoying the sunshine. Although I love the majestic, historical houses and gardens owned by the National Trust, my favourite places within the estates are the more humble kitchen gardens (particularly at Kingston Lacy in Dorset), where you can always find seasonal produce, heritage crops and the odd animal - in Knightshayes' case, a rather vocal goose. The National Trust often sell some of their surplus crops and when I stumbled across some bunches of pink rhubarb in the glasshouses, I couldn't resist.
I've combined the sweet and tart 'barb with classic flavours of orange and ginger here but the recipe is easily adaptable depending on what's in season or what your tastes are. It would work well with cinnamon, pear and apple in Autumn or blueberries and lemon in the summer. I also tweaked the recipe to be just a little healthier, adding coconut oil as fat, low fat yoghurt and chia seeds in the topping. Perhaps healthy is the wrong word but hey, if a cake's got fruit in..... :)
Muffin Ingredients:
6 tbsp coconut oil, liquid (sunflower or even melted butter would work too)
200g/7oz soft brown or light muscavado sugar
1 free-range egg, beaten
250ml/9fl oz low fat greek yoghurt, buttermilk (or failing all else - milk with lemon juice added)
1½ tsp vanilla extract
170g/3oz rhubarb, cut into 1cm/½in pieces
1 tbsp baking powder
250g/9oz plain flour, sifted
55g/1oz oat bran
Zest of one large orange
2tsp ground ginger
1 or 2 chunks of stem ginger, finely diced.
To Top: A sprinkle of demerara sugar, chunky oats and/or chia seeds.
Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Line 12 muffin tins with paper cases or spray the tin with oil.
In a large bowl, mix together the oil (zapped in the microwave), sugar, egg, yoghurt and vanilla.
Fold in the rhubarb, ginger, orange zest, baking powder, flour and oat bran, then spoon the mixture into the cases.
Mix together the topping ingredients and sprinkle over the muffins. Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes until golden brown and springy to the touch.
Recipe adapted from Hairy Bikers here
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