Ugly but good…
I forgot something of vital importance the other morning.
No, you in the back with that smirk on your face, it wasn’t my pants.
And no, it wasn’t to turn the time forward one hour for daylight savings, either. (It was my phone that forgot to do that, not me. I therefore take no responsibility for running one hour late to everything on Sunday, before I finally figured out what was going on. At noon, which I thought was 11am. Yep. Phone’s fault.)
No, you in the back there with that smirk still on your face, it wasn’t my underpants. Who do you think I am? Britney Spears?
Give it a rest. I shall never be a Slave 4 U.
The seemingly insignificant fact that I forgot was this: savoury muffin batter doesn’t taste as good as sweet muffin batter.
You might not think forgetting this is a big deal, but when you’ve cheekily decided to retain a lot of raw batter in the mixing bowl as a Cook’s Treat to enjoy while the rest of the batter bakes in the oven, well… you sort of want it to taste good.
But it turns out that the silly batter only tastes dandy once it’s transmogrified into a muffin.
A delicately-crumbed yet hefty, herb-flecked and subtly nutty mushroom-studded muffin, that is. A muffin that you’ve brainstormed as your contribution to A Slice of Cherry Pie’s “In The Bag” September 2010 event.
This is the first blog event I’ve ever contributed to, and I’m hoping the fact that I’m posting these muffins in October for a September event won’t be held against me. The brief was this: created something using the seasonal ingredients of mushrooms, herbs, and nuts. I first considered risottos, dips, soups, and bruschetta, but in the end I wanted a savoury muffin. So I took this Cumin and Pea Muffin recipe and changed it drastically, subbing some of the flour with hazelnut meal, switching cumin and peas for mushrooms and thyme, and, well, making it vegan.
Because sometimes, that’s what I do, whether for not-Nutella brownies, caraway cake, or the little fellas below, which are equally delicious on their own as with a bowl of something like eggplant and tahini soup for lunch.
So don’t forget to give these a try. (Oh, and don’t forget your pants. I hear those things are useful for avoiding arrest when you walk past schoolyards.)
Mushroom, Thyme, and Hazelnut Muffins, Which Are Also A Little Bit Vegan. Ta-Daa!
Makes 12.
- 2 tsp olive oil
- 200g finely chopped mushrooms
- 1 clove garlic, crushed
- 1 tsp thyme
- 1 1/2 cups (225g) self-raising flour
- 1/2 cup (75g) hazelnut meal
- 1/4 tsp baking powder
- 80g Nuttelex/dairy-free spread, melted (or butter, for you butter-lovers!)
- 1 tb (15ml) flaxmeal, stirred together with 3 tb (45ml) water (or 1 egg, lightly beaten, for you egg-lovers!)
- 1 cup soy milk (or normal milk, for… I think you can see where I’m heading with this by now)
- 1 tsp tamari
- Preheat oven to 200°C (400°F). Grease twelve 1/3 cup capacity muffin holes.
- Heat oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Tip in the mushrooms, garlic, and thyme, and cook for 5-10 minutes until the mushrooms have released their liquid and this liquid has then evaporated. In other words: cook your mushrooms, pants-wearing people. Allow mushrooms to cool.
- Sift flour, hazelnut meal, and baking powder into a bowl. (Pssst… I didn’t sift. Rebel!) Combine the melted spread/butter, flaxmeal mixture/egg, milk and tamari in a jug, then tip into flour mixture.
- Stir gently until almost combined, then fold in the mushroom mixture. Don’t over-stir, or the muffins will turn out to be dense like [insert your favourite hated politician here]. Fill the muffin holes three-quarters full.
- Bake for 18-20 minutes until golden on top and a skewer inserted in the centre of a muffin comes out clean. Gobble up at least one muffin straight away, revelling in the fact that it tastes so much better now that the scrapings of the batter-bowl did twenty minutes ago.
What’s that you say? I’m flogging a dead horse with this batter-eating story-thread? No I’m not! This recipe is vegan, after all. No dead animals here.
{ 43 comments… read them below or add one }
“Ugly but good” – Isn’t this ALL nuts?
I know, you’re thinking “Oh boy, here she goes…”
But really, fascinating recipe. (Is it weird that I can be “fascinated” by recipes?) Very inventive! I <3 hazelnut meal, yet have never used it in a savory preparation.
PS—I have some news I'm bursting at the seams with (no good way to embed the preposition there, I'm afraid, but it doesn't matter because the whole no-dangling-preposition preposterousness is just a holdover from 16th century grammarians with a prejudice against Shakespeare; I wrote my honors thesis in college on that by the way, but I digress), and I SO want to tell you before I announce it on the blog in a couple days…but I'm torn! Do you wanna know ahead of time? Or be surprised?
I’m sorry, I can’t take you seriously when you use the word “dangling” in the same comment as a nut-innuendo.
And OMG OMG!! I’m so excited for you lady! So much love and excitement and wish-I-could-go-with-you! SQUEE!!! xoxoxoxoxox
P.S. Yes, I realise that to everyone else, there’s been no explanation of this reaction…
Wow. Hannah, YOU just introduced a new sexual innuendo/euphemism to ME.
The dangling preposition.
I am SO going to use that one.
! YAY FOR HAPPINESS!
You do realise I’m never going to be able to take the word “dangling” seriously again. You and I really shouldn’t have these conversations
Some of my favorite foods are the “ugliest.” I’ve never made a savory muffin before. Strange, but true. Yours makes me want to give it a shot!
Savoury muffins can definitely be winners, and I say that as someone with an indefatigable sweet tooth! I’d love to see what you could come up with!
oooh I am a HUGE fan of savoury muffins – and these look GREAT!
I bet they’d be nice with some parmesan cheese, too
Veganlicious!
Darn tootin’!
Transmogrified into Muffins you say….., Wish I was there to see that, as it is…, I’ve just gotta believe you. And they taste good too.
I’m pretty sure you’d have seen transmogrification happen many a time in your own kitchen over the years
So true Hannah. Yesterday is a moot point on this very subject in fact & definatly a non cooking ‘transmogrified’ way as we quickly cleared away one function (A Wake) & turned the room around for the next function (A Wedding). I confess to marvelling at how a room takes on the energy of the function everytime. Yes indeedy – it was a great example of transmogrification
Actually, that’s evidence of Durkheim’s theory of the collective conscience! We all feel, at such functions/social events, the way the overall group is “expected” to feel as a result of our socialisation, and… okay, I’ll shut up now, and instead say…. wedding cake!
looks yummo, despite my mushroom dislike
You could easily switch the mushrooms for something more up your alley! Such as the peas of the original recipe, or anything, really! Except maybe apricots. They’d probably taste weird here.
Mushroom and thyme is a winning combination and I love the nutty texture too – the world needs more savoury muffins and I need one of these!
But I must give you some advice in case you spend time with Brits – to them pants means underpants! Don’t find out the embarrassing way like I did!
Thanks for that Joanna! I’ll have to add “pants” to “thongs” as words to be careful using when overseas
Oh, the world can be a dangerous place when it comes to retaining our dignity 
Yeah I’ve been caught out with thongs too
wow, what a creative idea! nice work!
Thanks!
Mushroom and thyme sounds great, pants or no pants. (BTW What was all that flour I found on the base of the mixmaster yesterday. Anyone?!!)
PUT SOME PANTS ON!!
And gosh, I have no idea whose fault that could be! Sounds like a devilish baking gnome got into your kitchen. Not your wonderful daughter. Definitely not.
You can dance, you can dance, everybody look at your pants!
….unless you’re not wearing any, in which case I can only hope you are in the comfort of your own house, possibly eating savoury muffin mix. Did you turn the reserved muffin mix into muffins as well, or did you add some sugar and keep eating? Ooooh or did you add some nasty chocolate???
Oh, I ate it all. I’m nothing if not a trooper, Conor. I kidna kept hoping it would get more delicious with time (with thyme? Oh, chortle), but it reality it just stayed the same level of weirdless.
I totally should have spread it on that nasty chocolate, though. The saltiness would have fit right in.
(P.S. I sing that lyric more often than I should, by the by.)
I must be a weirdo, because I think I do like savory bread batters just as much as sweet ones. (I’m not afraid of EATING raw eggs, just serving them to others.)
Oh, good
You never did strike me as someone likely to be vulnerable to American moral panics, so I was slightly confused before about the raw egg comment! After all, Gaston used to eat four dozen eggs every morning to help him get strong…
Perhaps if I keep making and eating raw savoury batter, I’ll get more into it?
I have made that mistake quite a few times too and it’s always so depressing! I also make the mistake of licking the spoon of my soup when I’m stirring it cold before heating it up and have a momentary panic that perhaps I do not like my soup after all. But all is well once it’s nicely cooked and heated.
Momentary soup panic is a DREADFUL thing, Vaala. I’m sorry you’ve had to go through that
(I know, because I did the same thing the other week when heating up a tomato coconut soup!) What is it about heat that is so magical?
I’ve never been a fan of savory muffins (I have a really bad sweet tooth!) but I do love mushrooms, will give these a try! =)))
Me too! It was a struggle to make myself not switch halfway through and make chocolate muffins instead
But there are the odd moments when savoury cravings strike, so these are good for then!
Love the idea of savory muffins. They sound great with soup or salad. I like that you created them!
I must admit, I was super excited when they worked out! It’s always scary messing with baked-goods recipes
Well that’s a flavour combination I probably would have never come up with in my lifetime. Which makes me wonder… how much awesomeness am I missing out on because my brain is too lame to think outside the realm of, say, chocolate and fruit?
I do have an on-off relationship with mushrooms, though. I hated them for ages, then I tried to force myself to like them, then I hated them more, then I weirdly decided to make haloumi-stuffed baked mushrooms and they were the greatest thing ever, so I made them over and over, and in one case I made them for Christmas lunch then got angry (on the inside of my skull, I didn’t actually express this anger of course) when people said “Oh no thanks, I’m not a fan of mushrooms”. Well… neither… am… I… *gritted teeth*… but…
This may be one of those recipes in which I actually enjoy mushrooms. In other news… I am so having stuffed mushrooms for dinner, ohhh yeahhh.
As I’ve said in other comments, it was a real trial for me to make myself cook something savoury. Like, pick-up-a-truck-with-my-pinkie-fingers hard. Like, complete-hyperbole hard. Like, like.
I never ate mushrooms much growing up because my brother hated them, although my mum did make amazing vinegary marinated mushrooms. I’m definitely liking the sound of your stuffed mushies, though. Perhaps your next blog could be on the neuroscience of hiding your frustration from Christmas guests? Something about the psychology of the faux-ho-ho-ho?
I don’t think I’ve ever cooked with hazelnut meal… do you generally use it as an ingredient in its own right (as you seem to have here), or as an alternative for the wheatards?
Just wondering, as a wheat-lover…but also a hazelnut lover! And butter-lover. And milk-lover. And egg-lover. And….lover. Not fighter. No.
Anyway, these look yum. I reckon they’d be awesome with cheese (are you surprised?! Especially given my above declarations of love? :p)…parmesan or feta would be my picks!
I already mentioned parmesan in these comments as a possible AWESOME addition
You and I are clearly on the same wavelength! Hazelnut meal I usually use in its own right, at least I never switch it 1-for-1 with flour, as it’s far too dense to allow that to work unproblematically. I think I once used it in hazelnut amaretti-ish cookies on this blog, too?
Oh, and by the way, I’ve decided to counter your rudeness by calling you an allergitard.
haha I know you’re not Britney Spears and that’s why I never thought that you’d forget your underpants
Although wouldn’t it be funny to do a post as a celebrity and blog what you think they eat? I think for Britney, it’s Cheetos and frappes 
Oooh, that would be super amusing! Endless hours of fun. For Taylor Momsen, it would be coffee and crack, for Dawn French it would be scones and popping candy, and for Madonna it would be protein shakes and small children.
For some reason, the pants thing reminded me of that Round the Twist episode where one of the characters could not stop saying “without my pants” at the end of each sentence.
I love mushrooms like I love my boyfriend and always wanted to know how they’d taste in a muffin so you can imagine how excited I was when I read this entry. Good work!
Straaaange things happen when you’re going Round The Twist!
(I rarely ever watched that show. Have read some Paul Jennings in my life though!)
Let me know if you ever try these! I wish I could say I love mushrooms as much as I love my boyfriend, but sadly he doesn’t exist.
Goodness, I thought that first photo was of a COOKIE. Sadness.
That’s because you’re still stuck on the bachelor of cookieology thing. Not that I can blame you.
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