You make my day, Muffin!

You can imagine my pleasant surprise when I logged on to see this award waiting for me at Uma's blog! Thank you so much for feeling that I am worthy of receiving this award, Uma. You definitely make my day with your sweet comments on my blog, dear. Now comes the difficult task of deciding on who to pass it on to!

After much soul searching, I've finally decided to pass the award on to:

Pravs of Simply Spicy
Cham of Spice Club
Revathi of En Ulagam
Dhivya of Dhivya's Cuisine (best of luck with the pregnancy!)
Lavi of Home Cook's Recipes
Indosungod of Daily Musings
Sra of When My Soup Came Alive

Congratulations to you ladies and thanks to you and every one else who takes the time to read on comment on my recipes. It means so much to hear your feedback!

So, you want to celebrate?? I think something sweet would be appropriate. AFAM is coming up, you say? I've got just the thing... Raspberry Almond Muffins!

These muffins came about pretty much on a whim. I've never been the biggest fan of raspberries simply because the seeds annoy me. But, I was in the grocery store and saw these gorgeous, ruby red berries that seemed to call to me and couldn't resist buying them. Once I came home, I pondered what to do with them. I finally decided on muffins.


I used a combo of AP flour and oats in this muffin. It's actually fairly healthy considering the addition of 2 cups of raspberries and the minimal sugar used. I used 1/2 cup of brown sugar which resulted in very mildly sweet muffins. This was totally fine with me, but I can see people with a moderate sweet tooth needing more along the lines of 3/4 to 1 cup (very sweet bakery type taste) of brown sugar. My husband has a pronounced sweet tooth and these were not sweet enough for him, so just keep that in mind. Hey, it just meant more for me! :)

Enough dilly-dally, right? Off to the recipe!

Ingredients:

All purpose flour - 1 1/3 cup
Oats - 1 cup
Brown sugar, packed - 1/2 cup for very mild sweetness (increase to 3/4 cup or so for sweeter)
Baking powder - 1 tbsp
Nutmeg - 3/4 tsp
Lemon zest - 2 tsp
Almond extract - 1/2 tsp
Salt - 1/2 tsp
Egg, beaten - 1
Milk - 1 cup
Vegetable oil - 1/4 cup
Raspberries - 2 cups (2 4.4 oz packs), coated with 2 tbsp of AP flour

Optional:

Slivered almonds - 2 tbsp
Granulated sugar - 1-2 tbsp

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 425 F. Line muffin tin with paper liners or grease them.

2. In a large bowl, stir together the flour, oats, sugar, salt, baking powder, lemon zest, and nutmeg. In another bowl, whisk the egg, milk, extract and oil together. Pour into the dry ingredients. Fold the mixture together gently so as not to overwork the batter. Then, fold in the berries coated with flour. Note: Coating with flour prevents the berries from sinking to the bottom of the muffins. Gently folding the berries in will prevent them from breaking up. This batter might seem a bit runny, but everything turns out fine once they're baked!

3. Divide batter evenly between muffin cups. Sprinkle some almond slivers on top and granulated sugar, if desired.

4. Bake at 425 for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick or cake tester comes out clean. Cool in pan for 5 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack to finish cooling. Serve warm with or without butter!

These delicious beauties are off to Ammalu's Kitchen for AFAM. AFAM was originated by Maheshwari of Beyond the Usual.