Earlier this month, the company where I work had an office-wide Secret Santa. Since it was not mandatory, none of us in my department decided to participate (we’re the cool kids), but rather, we decided to make our own small-scale gift exchange, with one simple condition: it would either have to be homemade or cost about $30.
It was a no-brainer what I was going to make. We are all into eating and most are better than average cooks, so I decided to make savoury muffins. I had never made muffins before, but decided on cheese and tomato. A simple search took me to this recipe. Extra points were added for chives, which was already in my mind.
Last Wednesday I hit the oven for the first test batch using cherry tomatoes and mild raw milk cheddar. All that to make sure my colleague would get high quality baked goods and I am proud to say that I was happy with the results. They were a bit small, but I fixed that on the actual batch I made on Thursday by adding more raw dough to each spot of the baking tray. For secrecy reasons I did not post anything about it here before the exchange and for absent-mindedness, no pictures were taken of these two batches.
I still don’t know his take on the muffins, but human guinea pigs approved of the test batch. 50% of tested cats were satisfied with the results.
On Friday afternoon it occurred to me that savoury muffins could be a great solution for an issue I have: mid morning and mid afternoon snacks. Even though I do it sometimes, I don’t like buying ready stuff as I am not sure on all the ingredients – not because of allergies or alimentary fads, but simply because there are a few ingredients I don’t think add much to flavour. Curiously, these are the ones present in a lot of food ready to buy. That meant that Saturday was a day to try a new recipe.
Instead of bacon, tomatoes and chives, I went for sausage and black kale, whilst cutting down on the cheese.
The recipe is pretty similar to the one on Baking Mad, but here is my adaptation.
Ingredients
70 g of sausage (not spicy)
100 g of grated cheese (I use cheddar)
50 g of black kale finely chopped
275 g of white flour
1 tablespoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon of brown sugar
1 teaspoon of salt
2 eggs
200 ml of milk
75 g of butter
Directions
1. Cook the sausage and finely chop it. Wait for it to cool down before moving on.
2. Pre-heat the oven at 190 Celsius (374 Fahrenheit). Mix in flour and baking powder and then add the sausage, cheese, kale, sugar and salt. If using a mixer, turn it on and let it do the job while you do step 3.
3. On a pan, melt the butter, add in milk and the eggs and mix all of them.
4. Add the liquid mix to the solid and integrate all into a dough.
5. Put the dough in a muffin baking tray and bake it for 30-35 minutes.
6. Eat, rinse and repeat.
Manning the Oven 