Banana, Nut & Speculoos Muffins

January 1st, 2013
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Happy New Year! It’s hard to believe that 2012 is now behind us and today is the first day of 2013!

Looking back, there are many great events that happened in 2012 – my first cookbook was published, a recipe was featured in Delicious magazine, visited Moscow, relaunched my food photography website, memorable wedding on the beach, our trip to Bali, my cookbook & an interview feature in Flavours magazine, cookbook signing at Waitrose, being one of the speakers at Food Blogger Connect, and took part in a cooking challenge! Wow! I have done quite a lot in 2012, all very memorable, rewarding and great experiences.

I hope this year will have much more exciting things lined up ahead. And of course, I want to be better – to make more delicious food with different types of catering equipment, take beautiful photos and write great blog posts and share with you all. I truly appreciate your support and readership all this while and I am glad to know some great people through blogging too!

Today, I have a very simple but sweet recipe to share. It uses one of my favourite ingredients - Speculoos spread. Speculoos is a kind of shortcrust biscuit that is very popular Netherlands and Belgium. The biscuit itself is really thin, crunchy and very flavourful as a result of using spices such as cinnamon, ginger, cloves, cardamom and nutmeg. I didn’t know about Speculoos spread until a while ago and when I saw it, I grabbed it without hesitation!

Instead of incorporating Speculoos spread in the mixture, I decided to melt it and use it like a glaze – just another way of using one of my favourite spreads and I totally love it!

banana-nut-speculoos-muffins

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Banana, Nut & Speculoos Muffins

Ingredients:

230g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
110g butter
100g sugar
2 eggs
2 bananas, mashed
80g pecan nuts
20g linseeds

Speculoos Glaze:
2 heaped tbsp speculoos spread
2-3 tbsp single cream

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line the muffin tin with muffin cases. In a bowl sieve the plain flour, baking powder and baking soda. Set it aside.

2. Beat the soft butter and sugar on high speed until light and fluffy. Add in the eggs, one at a time and mix until smooth. Mix in the banana, pecan nuts and linseeds. Mix well. Lower down the mixer speed, slowly add in the flour mixture and blend just until smooth.

3. Scoop the batter into the muffin cases. Bake for about 30-35 minutes or until golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

4. To prepare the speculoos glaze, heat some water in a saucepan until simmering. Put the speculoos spread in a bowl slightly bigger than the saucepan, suspend the bowl over the simmering water and do not allow the base of the bowl touch the water. Heat the speculoos spread, stirring regularly until completely melted. Then, add the single cream and whisk to combine. Then, remove from the heat.

5. One the muffins are cooked, let cool for 10 minutes in the pan before removing it. Drizzle over the speculoos glaze over the muffins before serving.