These bite sized muffins use the whole mandarin (skin and all) and are quick, easy and totally delicious!
My neighbour and I have a strange kind of food exchange going on. We swap all kinds of homemade foods from cakes to chuntneys, liqueurs to left overs and pies to preserves. But that’s not all, we share our bounty of fresh food too, especially when we have been on fruit picking adventures. Recently, Luce got a bag of apples that I picked myself in Canberra and she returned the fruity favour with a bag of mandarins, the sweetest, juiciest mandarins I ever did taste.
Of course, I could have eaten the mandarins and eat some I did, they were just juicylicious! However, I felt compelled to bake at least just a few. I had dabbled with this recipe almost a year ago with a whole orange (which in case you’re wondering works just as well,) but the mandarins were just that little bit sweeter and dare I say, even yummier!
Now you do need to use the whole mandarin in this recipe, skin and all, so choose organic if you can, wash the skin really well and make sure your fruit is seedless! You’ll notice you don’t need paper cases in this recipe, that way you get all the muffin in your mouth and not on the muffin paper and you can be kind to trees. Win, win!
The best thing about this recipe is the enormo-yield you get from a relatively small number of ingredients. The fact that they’re freezer friendly, go great in a lunch box and are super easy with or without a Thermomix is just a bonus!
Have you ever been fruit picking? What’s your favourite fruit season?
Makes 30
Ingredients
2 large mandains
90g caster sugar
1 large egg
100g milk of choice
50g butter
1 level teaspoon baking powder
175g self raising flour
1 tablespoon poppy seeds
icing sugar, for dusting
How to – Traditional
- Grease 2 x 12 hole mini muffin tins. Preheat oven to 200C/180C fan-forced.
- Cut mandarins into quarters and remove any excess pith and nobbly bits from the ends. Blitz the mandarins in a food processor until finely chopped. Set aside.
- Melt the butter in a medium microwave safe bowl. Allow to cool slightly.
- Add all the remaining ingredients except the chopped mandarins, poppy seeds and icing sugar and mix with a wooden spoon until just combined. Gently fold through the chopped mandarins and poppy seeds.
- Spoon the mixture into the muffin holes, filling them almost to the top.
- Bake about 15 minutes until well risen, golden and firm to the touch.
- Remove the mini muffins from the tin, dust with icing sugar and devour while warm.
How to – Thermomix
- Grease 2 x 12 hole mini muffin tins. Preheat oven to 200C/180C fan-forced.
- Cut mandarins into quarters and remove any excess pith and nobbly bits from the ends Place in TM bowl and chop for 8 seconds on speed 9. Set aside.
- Add butter to TM bowl. Melt for 2 minutes at 60 degrees on speed 2. Allow to cool for a couple of minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients except for the chopped mandarins, poppy seeds and icing sugar. Mix for 5 seconds on speed 5. Scrape down sides and base of bowl.
- Add the chopped mandarins and poppy seeds and mix on reverse speed 4 for 5 seconds.
- Spoon the mixture into the muffin holes, filling them almost to the top.
- Bake for about 15 minutes until well risen, golden and firm to the touch.
- Remove the mini muffins from the tin, dust with icing sugar and devour while warm.
