‘Breakfast muffins in the making’
Crunchy from the top from the granola, nuts and dried berries while the inside is moist and soft from the beet puree. Savory muffins are my kind of thing, I love trying out new versions and this beetroot turmeric combo seemed to be a hit yesterday at my darling friends baby shower. I’ve made oat muffins before and baked beetroot sweet potato pie many times so I just decided to combine the two together. The sweetness comes naturally from the sweet potato, banana and honey and the puree keeps the texture perfectly moist. The muffins last 3 days, they are yellow from the turmeric but after a day they have a little hint of purple to it. If you wish to keep the muffins purple, just leave the turmeric out but it gives a great addition to flavour in my opinion. Coat the end result with fresh rosemary and thyme and enjoy over coffee at breakfast.
Beetroot Puree
- 4-5 beetroot
- 1 medium-sized sweet potato
- 200 ml cream
- chicken stock cube
- 1 cup water
- salt/ground black pepper
- 1 tablespoon turmeric
Muffin ingredients (makes about 18 muffins)
- 3 cups flour (I used a mixture of all-purpose flour, graham and spelt, any flour will do)
- 2 cups oats (I used robust ones with seeds in them)
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1dl sunflower seeds
- 1dl chia seeds
- 1 dl nuts of choice
- 2 cups granola
- 2 ripe bananas
- 1 tablespoon honey
- 2 eggs
Garnish: melted butter, dried cranberries, pecan nuts, granola, salt, raisins, peanuts, rosemary, thyme
Directions
Preheat the oven to 190 C.
Begin by making the beetroot puree. Wash the beets and sweet potato and cut the ends off (no need to peel) and chop into smaller pieces. Place into a medium heated sauce pan with butter and stir around for about 1o minutes. Add in the water, cream, chicken stock cube and ground black pepper. Let it simmer gently with the lid on until the vegetables are cooked throughout. Then puree the mixture into a velvety thick paste. Season with turmeric and a pinch of salt. Leave to the side and begin working with the dry ingredients.
In a large bowl, add in the flour, baking powder, baking soda, oats, seeds/nuts of choice, granola. Then mix the dry ingredients with the beetroot paste. Add in the mushed bananas (mush with fork), 2 eggs and honey.
Scoop 2 large tablespoons into a muffin cake-base (I also made cups for each muffin from baking paper, find easy tutorials from YouTube). Then add pecan nuts, dried cranberries, raisins, granola and shaved cashews on top of each muffin. Brush each muffin top with melted butter so the nuts will not burn. Add a pinch of salt and place into the oven for about 30min or a bit more and leave to cool before serving. It doesn’t matter if the muffins seem a bit soft or undone, they will solidify once cooled and stay lovely and moist inside. Serve with finely chopped rosemary and thyme.
