I absolutely love the flavors of rose water, honey, pistachio and saffron. They are present in abundant doses in one of my all time favorite desserts, Baklava. But it was the spotting of Gulkand or rose jam, the omnipresent ingredient in the mouth refresher paan, that triggered the thought of creating this recipe. It is a muffin that has all these flavors, except it can be eating at breakfast and tea time with some soothing mint tea.
I started with one of my favorite jam muffin recipes from @seriouseats and modified it to its middle eastern/Indian relative. The original recipe can be found here. https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/03/bread-baking-jam-muffins-recipe.html
Here’s my variation.
Ingredients:
- 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 3/4 cup white whole wheat flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 heaped tsp cardamom powder
- 3/4 cup 2% milk
- 1/4 cup canola oil
- 1 egg
- 1/4 cup honey
- 1/2 cup gulkand or rose jam (I used Super Tower Gulkand from the Indian store)
- 2 tbsps toasted pistachio nuts
- 3 strands of saffron
- 1 heaped tbsp granulated sugar
How to:
1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F and line a 12 muffin pan with paper liners.
2. Toast the pistachio nuts and crush with saffron and granulated sugar in a mortar and pestle till it is a coarse mixture. Set aside.
3. Whisk the flours, baking powder, salt, and cardamom and set aside.
4. Mix the milk, oil, egg, and honey well and pour this into the flour mixture, folding gently till the ingredients are combined.
5. Swirl the gulkand into this mixture with a fork.
6. Divide the batter into the muffin cups.
7. Top with the pistachio nut mix and tap down slightly.
8. Bake at 400 degrees F for 10 minutes. Lower the temperature of the oven to 350 degrees and continue baking (without opening the door or taking out the muffins) for another 8 minutes. The muffins are done when the tops are brown and a cake tester comes out clean.
9. Enjoy with hot mint tea!
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