Fennel ricotta muffin フェンネル リコッタチーズ マフィン

This another one of my wife's muffin project.The recipe came from "Pastries from La Brea Bakery". The muffin has fennel flavor and has ricotta cheese stuffing with pecan and walnuts on the top.

This is again quite successful muffin. I will let my wife take over.

Ingredients:

For the batter
1 tsp. fennel seeds toasted and pulverized
3 cups AP flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 Tbs. plus 1 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 cup plain yogurt
3/4 cup vegetable oil

For the filling

1 cup ricotta cheese
1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 tsp. salt

For the topping 

walnuts or pecans toasted and chopped

Directions:
Mix the fennel, flour, sugar, baking powder and baking soda in a bowl and combine. In another bowl mix the yogurt and vegetable oil. Combine the dry and liquid ingredients. In a third bowl mix the ingredients for the filling. Place a scoop of the batter in heavily greased muffin tin. Add a scoop of the filling and top with another scoop of the batter. Top with the toasted chopped nuts. Cook in a 400 degree oven for 18-20 minutes. Allow to cool slightly then remove from the muffin tin.

These were very good muffins. They had a nice tender texture with a surprise moist layer of ricotta in the center. The fennel gave it a pleasant spicy taste which set these apart from the usual muffin. These were very creative and pleasantly different--characteristic of the muffin recipes presented in the La Brea cookbook. We actually ate them all before we could take all the usual pictures so we couldn't show the nice layer of filling. Also, my wife has made several batches of these muffins all with the same "short-lived" effect so these were the best pictures we could salvage.