Pizza Muffins

Pizza muffins, savoury muffins, call them what you will - they make a tasty snack.  Of course I love sweet muffins too - especially the blueberry kind.  When my father-in-law died fifteen years ago, I made a batch of muffins to take up to feed the grieving family.  For the first time ever, they were flat and unhappy little muffins, sunk down in misery in the muffin tray.  I guess they were reflecting the sadness we all felt...  But these little darlings will make you very happy, my friends.

savoury, cheesy, delicious morsels

I hunted through my multitudinous cookbook collection for muffin recipes and came up with the basics for the amount of flour, baking powder and so on.  Then I added in all the tasty pizza-like bits and bobs: cheese and olives, basil, ham and tomato paste...  Mr P. and Princess Pia were both fans of the finished result of my playing-around.  I hope you are too:-)  And don't be put off by the long list of ingredients; this is such an easy recipe, and it comes together very quickly, with delicious results.



ingredients:


250g. (8 oz) plain flour 

2½ tsp. baking powder

1 tsp bicarb soda

2 tsp lightly dried parsley (optional)

1 egg, lightly beaten

2 tsp basil paste

2-3 tsp tomato paste

150 mLs plain yoghurt

100 mLs buttermilk

75 mLs milk approx.

45 mLs olive oil

40g. ricotta

80g. ham, chopped roughly

40g. kalamata olives, sliced finely

50g. parmesan, grated

25g. roasted capsicum, chopped roughly

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/2 tsp ground black pepper

2-3 tsp spaghetti sprinkles (optional) for the top



Method:


Sift the flour, baking powder, bicarb soda and parsley into a large mixing bowl 

Whisk the egg in a large jug, then add the basil and tomato pastes;  stir well

Add the yoghurt, buttermilk, and milk into the jug and stir very well - you want to have 350 mLs all up in the jug, so adjust the plain milk as necessary

Now the olive oil and ricotta are added to the yoghurt mixture; you've got the picture - stir well

Whisk the ham, olives, parmesan, capsicum, salt and pepper into the flour mixture

Gently fold the yoghurt mixture into the flour; don't worry about lumps or bits of flour - you don't want to overwork the batter

Spoon the batter into a lined or greased 12 hole muffin tray and cast the sprinkles over the top; this batter makes 15 muffins so you will need to bake these, then bake the rest (unless you have 2 trays)

Bake at 180C for 25-30 minutes till golden

Leave to cool in the tray for 5 minutes, then place on a wire rack

Delicious with lots of butter


Notes:


I used patty pan liners to bake these, but you could just grease the holes well with butter

I baked 12 muffins, then used the rest of the batter to make one big pancake-like object - Mr P. was a big fan of this!

Spaghetti sprinkles are a mix of chilli, herbs and spices

whisk the flour, baking powder etc together 

gathering ingredients 

stir the wet and dry ingredients together - gently 

ready for the batter (I just think this shot is cute)

ready to be baked @180C for 25-30 mins.

savoury golden beauties

you can smell them from here:-)

fluffy, savoury muffins

   artwork © Sherry's Pickings