Apricot & Pistachio Muffins

Today I made some lovely muffins, Apricot and Pistachio.  The combination appealed to me and in muffin form I was sure they would be very good.

So it turned out, they taste wonderful, not too sweet but with the lovely apricot flavour, and the added crunch of nuts.  Dried apricots, soaked in a little lemon juice are ideal for these.  Muffins are always very simple to make, and don’t take long so almost anybody can make then and they will turn out very well indeed.

Ingredients:

• 140g dried apricots, finely chopped
• 50g pistachios, roughly chopped
• 160g plain flour
• 65g caster sugar
• 60ml natural yoghurt
• 60g butter, melted
• 1 medium egg
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• sugar for sprinking

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180c/160C Fan/350F
2. Grease a 12 hole muffin tin, or line it with paper cases.
3. Toss the dried apricot pieces in the lemon juice.
4. In a large bowl whisk the flour, nutmeg, baking powder and salt together to mix.  Set aside.
5. In another bowl add the butter to the sugar and mix thoroughly.
6. Add the yoghurt and egg and whisk until combined.
7. Add the dried apricot and mix in.
8. Add the flour mixture and stir in until barely combined.
9. Add the pistachios and mix in gently until the mixture is just combined.
10. Divide the mixture equally between the 12 muffins cases.  They will be about 2/3 full.
11. Sprinkle over a little granulated sugar(or as I did, preserving sugar which is a larger crystal).
12. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes, until a skewer poked into the middle comes out clean.
13. Remove from the oven and after a couple of minutes remove the muffins to a wire rack to cool.

Note: If you prefer larger muffins you can fill just 9 muffin cases, but you may need to bake for a little longer.