Are you undecided between Muffins and Cake? No problem, make both! 😀

This recipe is the work of my daughter. One afternoon a couple of years ago, give or take a month, she delighted us with a fruit cake so good you could lick your lips.
It turned out great, a perfect rustic dessert for breakfast that tasted a lot like a donut, a country cake, a treat made by grandma. In short, a dessert that we all love.

What can I say, Flavia has a good intuition in the kitchen, often her real ‘assemblages’ of ingredients, but above all the real chaos of dishes and bowls, and blenders and open bags, and sugar and flour, and dripping spoons scattered all over the kitchen, on all the countertops, and on the table… help!, in short, to put it simply… all this mess, always makes us poor spectators a bit… skeptical, that’s it. 😀 Even if everything always – always, really always – ends up with our stomachs full and our palates more than satisfied.
And with the admission that our skepticism was unfounded. 😄

Even if the chaos in the kitchen remains eh, and usually guess who… um… cleans? 😅 (but at least cleans with a full and happy belly!).

Now, I know you’re wondering: why does this recipe exist in both fruit muffin and fruit cake versions?
I’ll tell you. Because muffins bake faster. And when we decided to remake (together this time, because we had to determine the weights of the ingredients) the lip-smacking cake-that-is-moist-and-takes-an-hour-to-bake… the practical sense of the mom, who didn’t want to keep the oven on for all that time, prevailed! 😀 Hooray!

💪

Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Economical
Preparation time: 20 Minutes
Portions: 8-12
Cooking methods: Oven
Cuisine: Italian
Seasonality: All seasons

Ingredients

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup potato starch (or cornstarch or wheat starch)
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup milk
1 apple (about 5 oz)
1 pear (about 5 oz)
1 banana (about 3.5 oz)
15 almonds
3.5 oz raisins
to taste orange zest (grated, or lemon)
Half packet baking powder

Tools

Bowl
Mixer electric
Mold for muffins

Preparation

The preparation is very simple:

Soak the raisins (in water or, if desired, in a juice, like orange juice or pineapple or apple).
In the meantime:
Peel the fruit and cut it into pieces, then blend it with a small blender or food processor.
Using an electric mixer, beat the egg with the sugar. When it becomes frothy, add oil, milk, and blended fruit.
Combine flour, starch, and baking powder (better if sifted) by mixing with a spoon or with the mixer whisks at low speed.
Roughly chop the almonds with a knife, drain the raisins and add them to the mixture.
Add a grating of orange zest, or lemon if desired.
Divide the mixture into muffin molds.
Bake in the oven at 356°F for 25-30 minutes.
For the cake version, as it is a rather moist mixture it is necessary to extend the baking time to at least 50 minutes. If needed, extend the baking by lowering the oven temperature to 338°F.