Chicken Muffin Recipe? Ewwww…

Last year, in the clearance section of Barnes and Noble, I was tempted into buying a muffin cookbook. Tempted by the beautiful pictures and the yummy sounding recipes, like cranberry muffins, spiced carrot cake muffins, etc. What I forgot in the heat of the moment was, I don’t really LIKE baking. One little thing goes wrong, and the recipe is ruined. Blech. I’m much more of a cook.

One section that I found especially intruiging was the section of savory muffins. Hmmm. Sounded good. Leek and ham muffins. Bacon and cornmeal muffins. I tried one recipe, for Spicy Chicken Muffins. Ted and Maya thought it was good, I thought it was just too weird. I think it was the texture that got me. No matter how long I cooked them, they never got dry enough in the middle. If you’re daring, here’s the recipe:

Spicy Chicken Muffins

1/2 cup sunflower-seed or peanut oil, plus extra for oiling
2 onions, chopped
3 scallions, chopped
1 small fresh red chili, seeded and finely chopped
3 skinless, boneless chicken thighs, chopped into small pieces
1 tsp paprika
scant 2 1/4 cups self rising flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 large eggs
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp grated lemon rind
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup plain yogurt
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 375 F/190 C. Oil a 12-cup muffin pan with sunflower-seed oil. Heat a little of the remaining oil in a skillet, add the onions, scallions, and chili, and cook over low heat., stirring constantly, for 3 minutes. Remove from the heat, lift out the onions and chili, and set aside. Heat a little more of he remaining oil in the skillet, add the chicken and paprika, and cook, stirring, over medium heat for 5 minutes. remove from the heat and set aside.

Sift the flour and baking powder into a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, lightly beat the eggs, hen stir in the remaining oil and the lemon juice and rind. Pour in the sour cream and the yogurt and mix together. Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture, then gently stir in the onions, scallions, chili, and chicken. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Do not overstir the batter-it is fine for it to be a little lumpy.

Divide the muffin batter evenly between the 12 cups in the muffin pans (they should reach the top), then transfer to the oven. Bake for 20 minutes, or until risen and golden. Remove the muffins from the oven and serve warm, or place them on a cooling rack and let cool.

In typing this out, I just for the first time noticed that the recipe called for self rising flour. I’m pretty sure I used all purpose flour. Maybe that’s my problem. See why baking isn’t my thing? Sigh.