Bento po česku

This challenge was interesting. Initially, I wanted to make kidney bean brownies with the provided recipe, but I couldn't find canned beans without salt. Then, by pure coincidence, I got the new issue (April 2013) of the cooking magazine Gurmet in my mailbox, and there was a recipe for Green Pea Muffins. They are really green, I think they would be perfect for St. Patrick's Day or Halloween - they would go perfectly with someone dressed as Hulk.

I started with streusel.

I mixed 1/2 cup of flour, 4 tablespoons of sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of green food colouring (powder), 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon and 2 tablespoons of butter using my fingers.

I put the streusel into the fridge.

In a bowl, I mixed 1 cup of flour, 1/2 cup of ground almonds and 1/2 tablespoon of baking powder. I set this aside.

I took 350 grams of frozen peas...

... cooked them in boiling water for 2 minutes...

... then drained and puréed them while they were still hot. I added 1/4 cup of oil.

I also added 1/4 cup milk, 1/2 tablespoon of vanilla, 1 cup of sugar and an egg (in this order, I wanted the purée to be as cool as possible before adding the egg) to the puree.

I poured the deliciously looking green purée into the dry ingredients and mixed the batter.

I also added 85 grams of melted white chocolate to the batter.

I poured the batter into muffin cups and topped with the green streusel.

I had some leftover batter (and a lot of leftover streusel), so I made one big muffin (or miniature cake) as well. (That is a LOT of streusel!)

 These are the finished muffins. They are really green!

The muffins have great structure: they are light, fluffy and spongy, but not dry. The taste of peas has been combined with almonds and vanilla and created a new comforting flavour. My fiancée loves it, even though he was rather doubtful when I told him that I was making pea muffins. And the colour is just divine!