Fresh, crispy, cheese & pesto muffins

Man cannot live on bread alone, he needs the odd muffin to keep him sane.  I don’t think anybody ever said that, but they should have.  Muffins are like mini breads.  Quicker to make and quicker to eat, and just as satisfying for a host of different reasons. 

You don’t need to make a sandwich out of a muffin, you can just bake your filling in.  Of course, that doesn’t preclude you from adding more fillings afterwards.  For more than 25 years these muffins, in one form or another, have been a mainstay of my mother’s kitchen.  The basic recipe is so easy to make, and the results so irresistably delicious that they were one of the recipes I gave to Garden & Home magazine for their May feature on me.

We sell several batches a day in the deli, and I have some in the oven whilst I type.  So, I’ve got 35 minutes to get the recipe down for you, and to link it to the lovely Chris at Melecotte, who is hosting this week’s WHB.  Originally the brainchild of Kalyn (Kalyn’s Kitchen), Weekend Herb Blogging is now in its 4th year and is being administered by Haalo at Cook (almost) anything.

So click here for the recipe, and yes, they qualify for WHB because they are full of homemade basil pesto.  Feel free to substitute any of your own herbs, cheeses, or other muffiny type things like crispy bacon bits, or slices of preserved green fig, apple or peppers.

Happy weekend everybody.

Whoops!  Clearly I am on African Time.  This week’s host is Marija from Palachinka.  Sorry Chris, but nice to discover a new blog anyway.  Thanks for hosting Marija.

Cream cheese, like Ricotta is a dead easy thing to make. I generally make my own yoghurt anyway, especially if I have a surplus of milk, and this cream cheese was made with a surplus of yoghurt.

• Line a sieve or perforated container with a piece of muslin.
• Mix the juice of 1 large lemon into 500ml of yoghurt
• I added two teaspoons of Orange Flower Water and the finely grated zest of the lemon too.
• Twist the top of the muslin (cheesecloth) together and weight down with a side plate.
• Stand the sieve in a bowl or container large enough to ensure that the bottom of the sieve does not touch the bottom of the bowl.
• Cover with a lid or foil so that the cream cheese doesn’t pick up fridge odours, and leave in the fridge to drain for 24 hours, pouring off any excess whey when it becomes too full.
• Once all the whey is drained you can compact your cheese slightly by twisting the muslin round.
• Unmould into a bowl, cover and keep in the refrigerator.
• Use within a week.

If you are wanting to use your cream cheese for savoury dishes you can add seasoning when you add the lemon juice, instead of the orange blossom water.

Thank you for trying a Vanielje Kitchen recipe.

I hope it fed you mind, body and soul.