Mini Christmas Muffins

© All rights reserved, Thorsten Kraska, 2009

The scent of christmas with cinnamon, cardamom and cloves combined with dried apricots, cranberries, currants and dried orange peelmake this mini muffins. Not as soft and moist as usual muffins are these treats great with a cup of coffee, tea or hot cacao on a cold winter day, for advent and during the holidays.

Mini Christmas Muffins
(depending on your mini muffin forms up to 40)
125g softened butter
100g sugar
2 eggs (medium size)
1 dash salt
200g all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon powder
1 teaspoon grounded cardamom seeds
1 knife point grounded cloves
120g dried fruit (I use dried apricots, dried cranberries, currants and dired orange peel)

Note: I always use fresh grounded cardamom and cloves, there flavor is much more intense. Especially for cardamom you need to take care, fresh cardamom can be overhelming. Then use less than 1 teaspoon. You will need around 10-12 green cardamom pods. Open them and ground the seeds only in a mortar. Also use fresh cloves and ground them. They are much better than cloves powder. I used cinnamon very often, so the cinnamon powder isn't getting old.

Cute the dried fruit into small pieces. Set aside. Mix flour and baking powder. Set aside. Preheat oven to 200°C. Prepare your mini muffin forms. I use paper forms and bake the muffins on a baking tray. To assure that the paper forms keep their form and shape, I put three little forms into each other. After baking you can remove the outer ones easily again.

Mix the softened butter, sugar, eggs and salt until creamy and foamy. Add the spices and mix until blended. Add the flour mixture and mix until just blended. Add the dried fruit, but leave some pieces to top the mufins later. Fold into the dough.

Fill the little muffin forms with the dough and put one or a few dried fruit pieces on top (I often use the dried orange peel only for this). Bake muffins until done. Baking time depends on size of your forms. For very little ones you need about 10 minutes for bigger ones a longer. Take out of oven when done and let cool on a cooling rack.

Before serving let it snow and dust them generousely with powder sugar. Enjoy!



© All rights reserved, Thorsten Kraska, 2009