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August 31st, 2012 
Sharon 
I was inspired to bake with apples recently after getting this quaint gift from a friend at a baby shower. It’s a hand-crocheted apple cosy (below). How cute is that? Of course the usual thoughts of pies and pastries came to mind but there is one recipe that I have been longing to improve for some time now but never got to it.
I own this little Family Circle recipe book that had various basic recipes for babies. Family Circle has a wide series of these notebook sized recipe books. I bought a lot of them when I was amassing my recipe book collection during uni days. They’re cheap when you get them at warehouse sales and good for a broke girl like me once who long to cook nice food.
This book has a mini apple muffin recipe which I made before but wasn’t too happy with the taste and texture. For one, they ask you to grate the apple rather than chunk them. To me, grating the apples means you have to get rid of that excess water because you might make the batter too wet, but I hated the thought of throwing away that apple-ly goodness so I decided to cut my apples to chunks this time. And to add more things to the mix because the batter is rather dense, I opted for raisins. I wish I had some nuts though at that time, would’ve been nice.
Cutting the apples to chunks was the BEST decision ever, not only could you actually taste apple in the muffin, you could bite into them. And apples get soft quickly once they’re cooked so I wouldn’t worry about any texture problem. My son loves it even better this time round. And best of all, I don’t have to bother with the hassle of handling an apple on a grater which wasn’t my favourite part the last time. Too much work and waste.
APPLE, RAISIN MUFFINS RECIPE 
(recipe adapted from Family Circle,
Baby & Toddler Food)
Ingredients;
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon powder
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup raisins
1 cup milk
125 gms melted butter
1 beaten egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 green apples, peeled, cored, cut into chunks
Dusting on top;
1 teaspoon icing sugar
A pinch of cinnamon powder
Steps;
1. Pre-heat oven to 180C and line muffin tray with muffin cups.
2. Mix dry ingredients together which are the flour, baking powder, cinnamon powder. brown sugar.
3. Toss in the raisins into the dry ingredients.
4. Prep your apples, put the chunks or dices into a bowl of water first to prevent them from browning.
5. Beat the egg together with the milk, butter and vanilla extract.
6. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and fold it gently with a spatula but don’t be too fastidious or else you will have tough muffins. Just till the ingredients are incorporated.
7. Drain the apple chunks and shake off excess water. Pour it into the batter and fold gently.
8. Fill muffin cups with the batter. I filled it up all the way to the brim this time because I want mountainous muffins, poofing up as they bake.
9. Bake for about 15 – 20 mins, or till the tops are browned and slightly harden but still soft in the inside. Test with a toothpick.
I’ve said it before….I’ll say it again…there’s just
something sexy about muffins,
cakes or any other baked goods that’s
fresh from the oven.
10. As they are cooling, give it a dusting of icing sugar with cinnamon on top. They’re best eaten warm.
Enjoy!
Tip; When you buy those small boxes of raisins, they tend to stick together in clumps. Toss the raisins with the dry ingredients first instead of a wet batter because it’ll be easier to separate them with your fingers and distribute them evenly. If you put in clumpy raisins into a wet mix, you might have to fold it extra times to get them separated.
TO ALL MY MALAYSIAN READERS,
SELAMAT HARI MERDEKA!
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Oooo these look good. Can make it for my kids since they like both apples and raisins!
thanks yen, u can put nuts too…i wudve if i had some….
yummy! apple muffins is one of the recipes i wanna try. love that apple will keep the muffins moist.