Puffins (Papaya Muffins)

Look at that delicious papaya! The papaya's I used for this recipe were fresh from my wonderful neighbor's tree. I love sharing fresh fruits and veggies that we grow and it is always nice to receive some too. We had an abundance of papaya's that were in our refrigerator so I decided to bake some muffins with them. 

I used the same recipe as the 'Surprise Banana Muffins', replacing the mashed bananas with mashed papayas and I altered a couple of the measurements.

This recipe made 10 muffins

For these muffins you will need...

1+1/2 C papaya guts, without the seeds of course 

2/3 C sugar

1 egg

1/4 C + 1 TB butter (melted in microwave for 15 sec)

1+1/2 C flour

1 heaping TSP baking soda

1 TSP baking powder

 1 pinch of salt

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 400°F

2. Beat the egg with a hand mixer until it is pale in color and a bit frothy

Or if you are feeling up for an arm workout and you don't have a hand mixer, you can always just use a whisk.

3. With the mixer still on, add in the sugar and melted butter then fold in the papaya innards with a rubber spatula

*My papayas were extra ripe so I didn't have to mash them when I scooped 

4. Sift in the dry ingredients, also folding this in. I added the dry ingredients in three parts so that it would combine nicely and I wouldn't overwork the batter

*Avoid over mixing

5. Spray the muffin tin with non-stick spray and scoop the mixture into each well.

I filled the tins pretty high, but not quite level with the top edge

You can even see the pieces of papaya!

6. Pop these babies in the oven for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean 

BOOM! Look at that, golden brown and delicious. 

This time the tops are actually popping out of the top, YAY!

7. Once the muffins are done, place them on a rack to cool completely

Here was Attempt #1 without beating the egg, butter, and sugar mixture together and with a level TSP of baking soda

These came out pretty dense and were not as fluffy as I had hoped. 

They may look deflated and sunken, but they still tasted pretty darn good.

Attempt #2

This was using the exact recipe as I have posted above. This made nice fluffy muffins that were really moist.

Just look at those nice pieces of orange papaya in there, mmm-mmm! 

 These muffins tasted amazing!! The more bites I took, the more it tasted almost like caramel and slightly milky, and I hadn't even added any milk! My obaachyan said that these are even better than our family's banana bread. Trust me, that is a big deal. Every time she comes to visit us, she asks us to bake her a couple of loaves of banana bread to take back with her to Japan. This time, she asked me to make a huge batch of these papaya muffins to take back with her. 

I would say that makes this recipe a success! 

Much love,

Crystal