A dream realized: Whole wheat mamey muffins

As you know, I’ve been adoring mamey lately. I bought another one on Friday at Mercado San Juan (more on that trip later), and I thought: I HAVE to bake something with this. It’s crying out to be more than a breakfast fruit.

Bread seemed like too much work. Pancakes, eh, not feeling them lately. But muffins. Muffins I could do. Muffins barely required any mixing. And my muffin pan was getting a little muffin top-ish around the middle. It needed a workout.

Since mamey tastes faintly of sweet potato (to me anyway), I trolled the Internet for a sweet potato muffin recipe. And bingo. The Wednesday Chef delivered.

Last night around 9 p.m. the sweet, warm scent of baking mamey muffins filled the apartment. I seriously wanted to bottle it and somehow post it on the Internet, just so you could all know. Hopefully scent technology is not too far away.

When they were done, I carefully extracted one from the pan, burned my fingers, split the muffin open and smeared it with butter. LORD. They were moist. Hot. Gently spicy, with just a whisper of ginger. My brain did backflips. This is how good they were. (Also, another sign, when I tasted the batter earlier — because you know, you gotta do that — I wanted to ravish the whole bowl.)

Recipe after the jump.

Note: The original recipe calls for a mix of whole wheat flour and whole wheat pastry flour, but I didn’t have the latter and it turned out fine. I also used yogurt instead of a mix of buttermilk and yogurt, because I couldn’t find buttermilk — or attempt to decode its Spanish name — at my local grocery store. I left out the dates, too, because I didn’t have those either. Although (idea flash)… ooooh, what if I do mamey with figs… gotta remember that for next time.

Whole-Wheat Mamey Muffins
Adapted from The Wednesday Chef, via Kim Boyce
’s recipe in the LA Times

Makes 12

Ingredients

1 mamey, cored and chopped into thick pieces, rind discarded
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
3 tablespoons brown sugar
3 tablespoons turbinado sugar
1 cup flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1 1/4 c. plain yogurt
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla

1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease a 12-cup muffin pan. In a fairly deep bowl (because the mamey might end up flying everywhere), lightly mash mamey with a fork until it’s mostly smooth. Personally, I like a little bit of mamey lumpiness.

2. In a medium bowl, cream the butter and sugars with an electric hand mixer until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.

3. In yet another medium bowl — sorry if you’re washing dishes later — whisk together the flour, whole-wheat flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger and allspice. Grab another medium bowl and whisk together the yogurt, egg and vanilla.

4. Scrape down the sides of the butter bowl and alternately add the dry and wet ingredients. Do not overmix. Gently and lovingly fold in the mamey. Snag a taste with a spoon, just to make sure it’s headed in the right direction.

6. Using an ice cream scoop (about one-half cup capacity), scoop the batter into each muffin cup. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into muffin center comes out clean. Mine ended up being closer to 35.