Triple Ginger & Orange Muffins (vegan)

These muffins came about as I was trying to come up with more ways to use sushi ginger, you know that lovely pickled stuff that comes with the sushi. For me it almost eclipse the sushi in deliciousness, well almost if the sushi is good that is…

So basically I had a jar of this stuff around and wanted to find another use for it apart from eating it with sushi, snacking directly from the jar, topping salads with it, uhm did I mention eating it straight from the jar? Wonder if it works well on oatmeal…

Anyhow, the point is I love ginger and I just bought a muffin pan, see where I am going with this?

These turned out remarkably nice for a recipe that I basically more or less made up as I went along, although I will admit to playing with the general idea in my head for a few days first. Not that I remembered half of what I had worked out when it came to actually making these muffins, but that is another story altogether.

What I like about these is that they are lovely and moist (I have no problems with that word 😉 ), and not too sweet. The semolina flour also adds a little bit of texture, almost crunch but not really. I think the idea to use semolina as a flour in baking originally came from Jamie Oliver‘s Jamie in Italy, I seem to remember something about the photographer being rather taken in with a pretty Italian girl and a semolina and apple cake… This book is delightful by the way, the photography and graphic design are stunning and the recipes ranging from feasts to easy peasy everyday dishes. All very Italian and extremely delicious, worth a look even if it is just to swoon over the pictures. A pasta dish I make on a regular basis Pasta a la Norma, originally came from this book. Not that I use the recipe anymore, so how much it resembles the original is anyone’s guess.

Anyhow… On with this recipe!

Triple Ginger & Orange Muffins (vegan)

1 cup oatmeal flour
½ cup semolina
½ ts cinnamon
¼ ts ginger
1 ts bakingpowder
½ ts baking soda
1/3 cup rapadura sugar (I am sure you can substitute sucanat or brown sugar, however if using the latter you migh want to use less, say about ¼ or the finished product will be a lot sweeter. Which you might prefer anyways! I’m not judging…)¼ cup grated carrot
¼ cup grated parsnip
2 flax eggs (2 T ground flax and 6 T warm water)
1 T grated fresh ginger
2 heaped T sushi ginger, chopped making about 2 ½ T
¼ cup coconut oil
1/3 cup milk of choice (I used rice milk)
Zest of 1 orange
Juice of 1 orange (I got just under 1/3 of a cup out of mine) 

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees
2. Prepare the flax egg by mixing ground flax and water and set aside
3. Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl (lucky lucky you if you actually have one… I use a Tupperware box and it is not even that big, really annoying)
4. In a separate bowl mix the wet ingredients (again if you have a big enough bowl I am jealous…)
5. Mix it all together and fill into the muffin tin*
6. Bake for approximately 20 minutes till a pin inserted comes out clean

*This makes 6 muffins with my silicone muffin pan, however I think these are a little larger than the metal ones that I have stored away in Scotland. So if you are using one of them it might make 7 or 8, if using the paper thingys (without a metal pan) I would make 10 or something as I find them to be less sturdy and always overflow. That could of course just be me…

If you feel like cutting them in half…

and adding some orange marmalade… I will most definitely not judge you…

Actually there is room here for being really fancy… Take a leaf out of Emily’s and Ashley’s book and add a “surprise” of jam in the middle of the muffin. Just think about it! You can make these quadruple ginger muffins if you can get hold of some ginger jam or maybe even some sort of chutney? I am rather partial to the ol’ orange marmalade in here, but that is because the one I have is beyond awesome. It is locally made on Gozo with purely Gozitan oranges, from this lovely shop. A must if you are in Victoria on Gozo, I can see that there are a few other outlets on Malta itself and you can get the produce elsewhere too. However the shop on Gozo is really charming.

Ooops… Sidetracked again, long story short ginger and oranges rock!