Pistachio-Date Muffins

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Have you tried Indian spices like cardamom in your muffins? I did for the first time and it is incredible.  Absolutely!  If you like cardamom then you will love this believe me at the cost of sounding repetitive.  The minute I found this in the latest cook book (Flavored breads) I am going through I was excited.  Pistachios and cardamom are synonymous with Indian sweets for me and I was quite excited to try it in a muffin.  Now looking back, the excitement was well worth it because the muffin lived up to the expectation and is becoming a great favorite with the family.  Loved it.. try it you will too.



These are toooo good, loved the cardamom flavor in it. 
PS: These are quite rich too :-)



Ingredients:

Pistachios, lightly toasted- 1 cup
All purpose flour- 1/2 cup
Whole wheat Flour- 1/4 cup
Baking powder- 3 tsp
Granulated sugar- 1/4 cup
Salt- 1/2tsp
Ground Cardamom- 1/2 tsp
Ground Ginger- 1/3 tsp
Pitted, chopped dates/Dried fruits- 2 cups
Unsalted butter- 1/2 cup
Brown sugar- 1/3 cup
Honey- 2 Tbsp
Milk- 1 cup
Eggs- 2

Method:

1.Preheat the oven at 375 degree F.Prepare muffin pans by greasing or by lining with paper liners.
2.Grind together the pistachios and flours together in a blender, until pistachios are ground well.
3.Mix the remaining drying ingredients and mix with with the pistachio-flour mixture.
4.Stir in the dates/ dry fruits and mix.
5.Whisk together the butter and sugar followed by eggs, honey and milk.
6.Using a wooden spoon, fold this into the flour mixture.Take care, not to overmix.
7.Spoon this batter into the prepared muffin pans. It's ok to fill it up, since this won't rise like the other muffins.I filled them little more than 3/4th and they rose only upto the top edge of the pans.
8.Bake for about 16-18 minutes or until the top turns brown.
9.Cool on a wire rack before storing them in an airtight container.

Notes:

1.This is slightly on the sweeter side.
2.The original recipe calls for dates.Since I had only one cup of dates in my pantry, I used one cup, of a mixture of dried fruits :-)
3.The recipe yields 18 standard size muffins.


Contributor: Namitha
Recipe adapted from : Flavored breads by Mark Miller and Maclauchlan