Recipe #71: Honey-Currant Muffins

Honey-Currant Muffins

The recipe in the book, 201 Muffins, called for graham flour, honey, currants, and amaretto. I couldn't find any recipes with those specific ingredients, so I opted for ones that had honey and some kind of heftier flour and/or raisins. I found two recipes that would work (with some tinkering), but since I couldn't decide which to make, I made both, ending up with more than two dozen muffins.

For the first recipe, I chose Honey Muffins from the Kellogg's website. It didn't call for whole wheat flour, but it did require 1/2 cup honey and All-Bran cereal, a substitute for the whole wheat flour. For the second recipe, I chose Yogurt Honey Muffins, from Kraft Canada's website. In this recipe, we we were to use whole wheat flour, honey (1/4 cup) and raisins. I decided that combining these two recipes would be too risky, so I made both. To get closer to the book's recipe, to each batch I added currants (rather than raisins for the Yogurt Honey Muffins); then to approximate amaretto (which I didn't have), I used chopped almonds. To replace the milk ingredient in each, I used buttermilk. In the photo, the muffin with the dark paper and a darker color is the Yogurt Honey Muffin; the other, lighter colored muffin is the Honey Muffin.

While the two recipes were similar, the muffins were different in interesting ways. Paradoxically, the extra honey (1/2 cup versus 1/4 cup) in the Honey Muffins made for a less sweet muffin, perhaps because brown sugar is sweeter than honey. (I never would have guessed that.) The Yogurt Honey Muffins were also moister than the Honey Muffins, though I'm not sure why. Perhaps it was because they had more liquid in them, or because the flour was not as dense (half was all-purpose flour; half cereal).

In any case, they were both good tasting and my tasters enjoyed them. I ended up having to give a half dozen away because there were too many for us to eat. I'm sure the recipients were appreciative, though I haven't gotten any feedback on that as yet.

I rate these as 5 out of 5 (with my additions, of course).

Next up: Honey Graham Muffins