Another feijoa recipe this week, to try to use up some of our feijoas from our trees. We also used a lemon from our lemon tree, which has lots of fruit that is just turning yellow. We made some yummy feijoa, lemon and coconut muffins based on this recipe.
Ingredients:
6 feijoas, peeled
Juice and zest of 1 lemon
100g butter, melted
3/4 cup caster sugar
1 free-range egg
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cardamom
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
Pinch of salt
1 cup desiccated coconut
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 190°C (374°F).
Combine peeled and roughly chopped feijoas, lemon juice and zest, melted butter, caster sugar, free-range egg and vanilla essence in a food processor. Blend until combined.
Sift flour, baking soda, spices and salt into a large bowl. Add 1 cup of desiccated coconut. Mix to combine, and make a well in the centre.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry ones. Fold ingredients together until combined. Distribute into cupcake cases in a 12-hole muffin tray.
Bake at 190°C (374°F) for 20 minutes or until they bounce back when touched.
What the kids can do:
Hand washing: Don’t forget to get the kids (and grownups too of course) to wash their hands before you start. Little hands always seem to end up touching everything, including the ingredients. This is extra important given the current Covid-19 situation. For good 20 second hand wash, have them sing “happy birthday to me” twice.
Feijoas: I peel the feijoas and Miss 5 chops them up with a butter knife (for safety). Chopping them up is not strictly necessary, but she likes to do that job.
Eggs: Pro tip for breaking eggs with a 4 year old, break eggs into a separate glass bowl before adding to your other ingredients. That way you can see and pick out any bits of shell before they are added in by mistake. I like to use free range eggs, because it is kinder to the chickens, and they also taste better. Bear in mind that raw eggs can carry Salmonella so wash little hands if they end up the raw egg. I also don’t recommend eating raw cake batter, just in case.
Mixing the ingredients: My daughter helped mix all the ingredients. The biggest messes seen to happen when sifting and mixing dry ingredients with the kids. A great tip from reader Dana M is to put a towel down underneath, which catches any stray ingredients for easy cleaning. When folding wet into dry ingredients, you want to mix thoroughly, but not too much or the cake will go flat. This usually requires the grown up to either finish off the mixing and/or intervene before things are mixed too much.
Cupcake cases: Miss 5 likes to add the cupcake cases to the muffin tray and then spoon in the ingredients. She is getting pretty good at it with minimal mess made and only a minimum amount of batter redistribution required on my part.
Keeping Them Occupied 