Chai Muffins with Burnt Almonds

I asked Edi to bring me a bag of burnt almonds when he and Jacqueline visited a funfair last weekend. Burnt almonds are my favorite funfair treat and I can't stop nibbling once I've opened a bag of them. Last Sunday morning (and as you know by now, that usually is the time, when I spontaneously develop new fancy baking ideas) I suddenly thought that, together with chai tea, these almonds would make a fabulous baked treat. I used my favorite basic muffin recipe from this book, made a few twists… and here you go: chai muffins with burnt almonds. A sweet and crunchy winter treat packed with all those wonderful flavors which remind you that Christmas is coming soon.

Recipe

(Basic muffin recipe from Leila Lindholm's Piece of Cake)

100g butter
200ml milk
2 teabags of Yogi tea (I used the Christmas blend)
2 eggs
120g sugar
1tsp vanilla sugar or one teaspoon vanilla extract
240g flour
2tsp baking powder
1 pinch of salt
about 200g of burnt almonds

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Line a muffin tray with paper cases.

In a small saucepan, warm up the milk and then, drop the teabags into the milk and let them infuse the milk with their flavor for a few minutes. When you take the teabags out of the milk, make sure that you squeeze them well.

Put your burnt almonds onto a blender and pulse until they are chopped into coarse chunks.

Melt butter, add milk. Beat eggs, sugar and vanilla sugar until foamy. Mix egg batter with milk batter. Mix flour, baking powder and salt and mix with the liquid batter. Add about half of your chopped almonds. Fill your mixture into the paper cases (make sure to only fill two thirds of your paper cases as the dough will rise) and top each muffin with some more chopped almonds.

Bake for about 20 minutes. Test with a wooden skewer if the muffins are done. No dough should stick to the skewer.