Don't I Look Like a Well-Balanced Eater?

According to Nigella, "apples long past their prime make for magnificent muffins." Good to know. I made her Apple and Cinnamon Muffins (pg 128-29 of Nigella Kitchen) with two crisp apples, but I regularly have a few sitting around that have gone soft, so now I know they can be salvaged and transformed into muffins.

This recipe is forgiving, which is a blessed relief to me after yet another Baking with Julia disappointment. I didn't realize until I'd already mixed most of the ingredients together that I only had one egg, rather than the required two. I crossed my fingers and hoped that the omission wouldn't make much difference. It didn't. Phew! These muffins poofed nicely, with a moist, light crumb. Sweetened by honey and brown sugar, they're just sweet enough without overdoing it, and the inclusion of chopped almonds in the batter makes them feel substantial. One muffin for breakfast was enough to hold me until lunch.

With the fruit and nuts and non-white-sugar sweeteners, I don't feel guilty, like I'm feeding Charlie cake for breakfast. 

Conclusion: Loved them, and Charlie approved!

Peanut Butter Hummus was fine. Nothing spectacular. Apparently, Nigella prefers the flavor that peanut butter lends better than tahini. I prefer tahini. This tasted saltier than I would like. I read a blog post by The Tipsy Baker the other day in which she realized that the reason one of the bread recipes in her book (Make the Bread, Buy the Butter) came out too salty for one of her readers was because the reader used Morton's salt, while Tipsy used a different brand. I had no idea that different brands made a difference. Did you? Perhaps this explains my salty hummus. I've always bought Morton's out of habit. It may be time to try a new brand.

They have purple carrots in the local supermarket here! Hee hee!

Conclusion: Just okay. Most supermarket brands taste better to me than this did. It reminded me that I wanted to retry the hummus recipe from Around My French Table now that I have my proper food processor back.