Friday, April 25, 2008

Cranberry, clove and nut muffins - Think Spice, Think Cloves


Gretchen from Canela & Comino is hosting this month's Think Spice event with a Cloves theme, which requires participants to create and share a dish containing cloves as the star spice.

I have to confess that I don't use cloves often, so it was great to have the chance to research a recipe featuring cloves and what I had around the house (given that today is the deadline and it is a public holiday, so shopping is out of the question).

Not only do I not use cloves very often, I also don't have much information to share about them. However, one thing that I do remember from primary school is that in times past, before the blessed era of modern dentistry, people used to chew on cloves to help relieve toothache. This does not exactly sound pleasant because cloves are rather bitter, but I guess if it helped to ease the pain, it was worth it. As for me, I think I will continue to visit my excellent dentist, Boris, for pain prevention.

I have made Cranberry, Clove and Nut Muffins for this event. My dish contains ground cloves, and is more likely to promote tooth decay than anything else (hence necessitating more cloves?!?). The recipe is from All Recipes.com, and can be found here. However, I changed the recipe by substituting the cardamom for more cloves (making roughly a teaspoon of ground cloves), and by substituting the walnuts for flaked almonds (because this is all that I had :) ).

The resulting muffins are a rather pretty, deep golden brown, studded with ruby red cranberries. They taste sharper than the usual muffins that I favour because of the cranberries and the cloves, but these are two wintery foods that complement each other well.


To check out the many great ways to use cloves in your cooking, check out Gretchen's site once the roundup is posted.

7 comments:

Silvia - Magnolia Wedding Planner said...

thanks for the recipe..but do you want to know what i was looking mostly? :-P your wonderful ceramics!! Fantastic they are so sober and chic!
Silvia

Rosie said...

Your muffins have that yummy factor!! Cranberries, nuts and spices what a great bake :)

Rosie x

Peter M said...

Cake, the aroma of cloves when you baked these muffins must have been heavenly. Also, don't think I didn't notice the china!

Lore said...

Great flavours for a spicy muffin! I should give the cranberry-clove combo a go sometime.

Cakelaw said...

LOL Sylvia - I tried to make an effort with the photo, a bit more than my usual "plonk it on a plate" approach.

Hi Rosie, and the smell as they bake is devine!

Peter, absolutely correct - it's sad whenthey cool because you lose the aroma. Thanks for notcing the china - I am trying to make the photos more interesting.

Hi Lore, I liked these flavours, but one commentator on the recipe said she didn't and wanted to sub in all cardamom - just goes to show that taste is very subjective!

Gretchen Noelle said...

These really sound delicious! Wish i had fresh cranberries to bake with. thanks so much for participating!

Unknown said...

This is delicious.

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