Apple Streusel Muffins

It's been a long time, eh? Sorry about that. Besides being on holiday for a week, I took a little break from baking, mostly because it's almost Christmas and I do an extraordinary amount of baking for Christmas.

But, as it's Halloween, in the UK retail world tomorrow marks the official beginning of the Christmas season. And I really can't let autumn pass by, Halloween especially, without some seasonal baking.

Apples and pumpkin. Short of candy corn and cranberries, they are the staples of autumn baking. (Can you bake with candy corn, actually? Perhaps I'll experiment on that in the next few days...) Had I not used the last of the eggs for today's muffins today would have provided a double feature, these apple muffins and something else with the pumpkin puree that's s

itting in my fridge. Alas, no more eggs. And it's too rainy to go to the shop.

So it's just the muffins today. But they are plenty. Delicious with spice, nutty on top, great with a cup of Chai Spiced tea.

The recipe calls for flaxseed but I don't have any in the cupboard (can you believe Tesco want 5 quid for a box?). I substituted wheat germ instead, which worked fine. If you don't have either, perhaps whole wheat flour will suffice. Try it and see.

1 cup flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

1/3 cup brown sugar

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp apple pie spice (see notes below)

1/4 tsp salt

2 eggs

1 cup buttermilk

2 tbsp canola oil

3/4 cup shredded apple with peel

2 tbsp chopped pecans

1 tbsp flaxseed

1 tbsp butter

1 tbsp brown sugar

Preheat oven to 350/gas 4.

Sift both flours, baking powder, sugar, salt and spices together. Make a well in the centre, set aside.

Beat eggs. Stir in milk and oil. Add to the flour mix. Stir together until just moistened. Fold in apple. Spoon into 12 muffin cups.

Combine pecans, flaxseed and sugar. Cut in butter until it looks like bread crumbs. Spoon on top of muffins.

Bake 18-20 minutes until skewer inserted comes out clean. They won't look that golden on top so don't overbake (I think I did a little). Check with a toothpick at 18 minutes to be sure then go from there.

For the apple pie spice, as it's not something sold in the UK (this is an American company's recipe), mix together 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp nutmeg, 1/8 allspice and 1/8 tsp ground cardamom. This will produce more than the 1 tsp necessary but just barely. Feel free to make a bigger batch and store in your spice cupboard. I did.

Double Chocolate Brownies

Another picnic. Another chance to try out a healthier version of a recipe. And it almost went well. Brownies came out a little gooey, which is great for standing at the kitchen counter, picking at the goo and licking the chocolate off my fingers. In the future, I'll try a bigger pan to spread out the batter. That will give me a lot more nice crispy edges that I love.

Either way, it's only 111 calories and 4 grams of fat per bar. So even if you have to lick the goo off your fingers, go for it.

4 tbsp butter
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup cold water
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup milk or semi sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350/gas 4

Melt butter. Remove from heat and stir in sugar, water and vanilla. Mix in flour, cocoa and baking powder. Add chocolate chips pieces. Baking times will vary depending on your pan; I kept mine in the over for about 45 minutes. You want to be able to stick a skewer into the middle and it comes out clean and the edges crispy.

Sorry no pictures, my actual camera is in a friend's car and my iPhone died this weekend. Hopefully I'll have pictures for the rest of the recipes this week. But you all know what a brownie is supposed to look like.