Rhubarb, Apple and Custard Muffins

You may have noticed with the overload of shearing related stories over on my Instagram, that we are indeed shearing this week. Which means I am feeding shearers this week. My sister-in-law Mandy and Lou (who works in the office for us) do the lion’s share of churning out the roast lunches everyday, whilst I’m usually on morning and afternoon smoko duties. Armloads of containers of sweets (for the afternoon) and savoury (for the morning) creations are leaving the Brindabella kitchen on the daily this week. My brownies always get a good run, and are always requested for a repeat appearance day after day, but I also do muffins, slices, cakes, scones…the usual fare. Mornings involve sandwiches or savoury muffins (spinach, feta, sun-dried tomato, ricotta little eggy-quiche things in filo pastry I make) and of course bacon and egg rolls x12 are a regular feature.

At this time of year the rhubarb in the garden is going gangbusters – I often forget about it until Matt arrives at the back porch with an armload from the veggie patch he’s cut with his pocket knife. I usually see it when I’m gathering all the tomatoes and zucchinis and capsicums and cucumbers of an evening, and think “must get a knife to chop the tops off the rhubarb” (as they are poisonous) and of course never come back. Handy that the husband always has a knife on his belt so doesn’t have this forgetfulness problem. I stew up enormous batches in a big pot with lots of vanilla and sprinkle of sugar, and keep in the fridge for the girls weetbix or with yogurt for dessert, but this week they also got a run in a muffin form – alongside some apple, because: classic combination. I found this recipe which also included custard powder so thought I’d give it a crack, as I seem to have a big jar of custard powder in the pantry I never really use! These have had the thumbs up from two small girls in this house, and six hungry shearers up at the shed…

Rhubarb, Apple and Custard Muffins

Ingredients

Muffins:
2 cups self raising flour
1/4 cup custard powder
1/4 cup coconut sugar (original recipe calls for castor and brown, I had coconut in the pantry so used it!) 
2 apples, peeled and chopped
1/2 cup stewed rhubarb (I doubled the amount of rhubarb from original recipe, more the merrier?)
100g butter, melted
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped (I had vanilla beans in the pantry and really wanted to up the vanilla factor with this recipe!)

Crumble:
1/2 cup flour
1/3 cup caster sugar
Zest of a lemon
60 grams of butter, melted

Method

Preheat oven to 180 degrees and grease a 12 hole muffin tin. In a small bowl, mix together the crumble ingredients with a fork until they make a crumbly mixture. Set aside.
Once you’ve peeled and chopped the apples, combine the flour, custard powder, sugar and rhubarb with the apples in a bowl. Pour in the milk, then vanilla seed scrapings, eggs and butter. Stir until just combined, don’t overmix it. Using an ice-cream scoop (my favourite kitchen tool for baking!) put one scoop in each muffin hole. Sprinkle a bit of the crumble mix on top of each muffin. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the crumble is slightly golden.

One of my favourite classic flavour combinations: apple, rhubarb and vanilla – and custard! Yum. I always love a crumble on a muffin, so make that crumb mix up with my eyes closed now to sprinkle on basically anything and everything that goes in my oven. Highly recommend it.

If you’re feeding shearers at this time of year (hats off to you), what’s cooking in your kitchen?
Rhubarb coming out your ears in Autumn too?
Penchant for a crumble topped muffin?

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