I miss my Canadian friend Marci. She left Australia in May this year and gave me the most incredible muffin cookbook as a leaving present. So after chatting to Marci this morning, I made muffins to remind me of all those mornings we drank coffee and shared a muffin at Single Origin in Surry Hills. I am a big fan of ricotta in muffins, it adds a dose of animal protein to an otherwise carb heavy snack and it tastes yummy. There are no ricotta muffin recipes in the book so this is my version.
I have used organic stone ground spelt flour which does not rise as well as refined white flour but has a better glycaemic index (GI). The glycaemic index is a measure of how much a food raises blood glucose levels after eating. This year, we were lucky enough to be lectured in carbohydrate science by Professor Jennie Brand-Miller who is well known for her work on the GI. Conventional milling is very efficient in removing all of the bran from the endosperm, which increases its digestibility and thus its GI. To make wholemeal flour, ground bran is simply added back into refined flour. Stone ground flour is a lot coarser and it is less susceptible to gelatinisation resulting in a lower GI. The GI of food is important for those with insulin resistance or type 2 diabetes and low GI foods have been shown to improve these conditions. You can read more about the glycaemic index here.
- 2 cups of whole spelt flour
- 4 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt
- ¾ cups of sugar
- 1 cup of unhomogenised whole milk
- 70 ml of grapeseed oil
- 1 egg
- 1 cup chopped mango (not overripe)
- 100 g crumbly whole milk ricotta
