Beet & Walnut Muffins
Nov 15th, 2011 | By Peter Minakis | Category: Baking, Breakfast, Dessert, Eggs, Featured, Flour, Recipes, Snacks, Sugar, Vegetarian
A couple of weeks ago I saw a recipe for a Beet & Walnut cake – one of those cakes that was probably baked in a loaf pan an resembled a banana or zucchini bread. Kinda. What was unique about this bread is that it contained grated beets – raw beets and when you cut into the bread you could see flecks of beet inside the bread…like a red and yellow mosaic. I was instantly drawn to the idea and I’ve finally come around to making it.
Much like a carrot cake or zucchini bread the beets are grated and mix into the batter raw – NOT boiled or cooked in any other way. There’s plenty of time for the beets to cook in the batter and did I mention the inside of the bread looks fantastic with the red beats speckles? (Yeah I did)
The most important steps to making Beet & Walnut muffins (yes they are sweet) or cake is tossing both the walnuts and grated beets in some flour. The is process is important because you’ll help your walnuts from sinking to the bottom of the loaf while baking and the beets will not bleed to the point of making your cake turn all red. Bottom line: mix your grated beets with some flour and mix into the batter just before pouring the batter into a muffin tin or loaf pan.
I opted to make muffins this time as I gave these to the hostess who had me over for a luncheon/tea this afternoon and there was no way I was going to give her a cake that was missing a slice or risk giving someone an insipid cake. Muffins it was, I tasted a couple, took some quick snaps and I have wonderful, quirky and sneaky way to have your kids eat vegetables…in cake or muffin form. Oh, beets are in season…enjoy!
Beet & Walnut Muffins
(makes 12 muffins or 1 loaf)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 level Tbsp. of baking powder
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup milk
1/4 cup olive oil
2 cups grated beets (raw)
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
extra flour for dredging beets and walnuts
pre-heated 375F oven
- In one bowl, add your dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, cinnamon and mix with a fork. In another bowl, lightly beat your eggs, milk and oil and set aside. Pre-heat your oven to 375F, middle rack.
- Chop your walnuts and add enough flour (approx. 1 Tbsp.) to coat the nuts, toss well. Peel your raw beet and pass through the side of your box grater with large holes. You should have approx. 2 cups loosely filled. Add flour while mixing with a fork until the grated beets appear a light pink (almost dry) in colour. Set aside.
- Add the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix quickly with a spoon. Add add the walnuts and mix in. Finally, add the grated beets into the dough mixture.
- Grease your muffin tins or place the paper muffin cups into the pan and spoon in or use an ice cream scooper to insert the dough into each muffin mold. Place in your pre-heated oven for 20 minutes (stick a toothpick into a muffin to check for doneness – no dough should stick to it).
- Remove the muffins from the oven and carefully remove them from the tin and allow to slightly cool on a rack. Serve warm or room temperature.
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© 2011, Peter Minakis. All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post in a feed reader or at http://kalofagas.ca then the site you are reading is illegally publishing copyrighted material. Contact me at truenorth67 AT gmail DOT COM. All recipes, text and photographs in this post are the original creations & property of the author.
I love the beautiful inside of this muffin and the flavours sound mouthwatering. I would love to see what yellow and red beets look like together in this cake. :)
What a fab idea! Beets must be one of the few ingredients I haven’t made into muffins yet. But this is about to change… :)
What a unique recipe that sounds divine!!! Cannot wait to try it.
Beautiful! That combo is awesome.
Cheers,
Rosa
what a fantastic and cleaver recipe! good call about coating the essentials in flour. i always forget that and i always get the sinkers. i never thought about using raw beets… love it! gotta try a whole bunch of different colored beets to see what that mosaic is all about.
Peter κάποια στιγμή είχα φτιάξει κέικ παντζάρι, είχε γίνει πολύ νόστιμο, δεν το περίμενα!!
Πολύ ωραία ιδέα να το βάλεις και σε μαφινάκια!
Φιλιά, καλή σου μέρα!
First of all your anti spam quiz is interesting. and your muffins with beet are even more interesting. Never thought to even try. My husband is right “‘ Men are great chefs.”
Makes a lot of sense since beets supposedly have a high sugar content. Maybe next time you make these you could Fedex me a few???
At first, I was a little sceptical when I saw the recipe. How do you include beets into a cake? But it tastes really good when I tried it out. Thanks for the eye opening idea!