Faery Muffins

Beltane is the celebration of fertility and the marriage of the God and Goddess. So any food included in the ritual should be appropriate in its nature and its symbolism. Bananas and hazelnuts as symbols of male fertility and strawberries as an aphrodisiac are extremely appropriate ingredients, while oatmeal are an essential ingredient of many Beltane recipes.

You Will Need:

• 200g semolina
• 80-100g oats/oat flakes
• 3 tbsp orange juice (freshly squeezed, you won't need even one whole orange)
• 1 tbsp orange zest
• 90g softened butter
• 1 banana
• 150g chopped strawberries
• 100g sugar
• 120g ground hazelnuts
• 1-1.5 packs baking powder
• 6 eggs
• 1 vanilla sugar

How To Prepare:

1. Separate the yolks and egg whites in two bowls. Whisk the egg whites into a firm snow.
2. Mix together the yolks, sugar, vanilla sugar, orange zest and orange juice.
3. Grind the hazelnuts (I recommend using a blender of some sort for this).
4. In the egg yolk mixture, add semolina, baking powder, ground hazelnuts and softened butter.
5. Chop the banana and strawberries into smaller pieces (don't forget to wash the strawberries and cut off the stems) and using a blender, blend them into a paste but leave in some chunks.
6. Add the banana and strawberry mixture into the egg yolk mixture and start adding the egg whites little by little and mixing it in.
7. Prepare your muffin tin (you can either grease it a bit or, if you have paper muffin cups just put them in the tin and put the mixture in them).
8. Heat up the oven to 175°C and bake for 20 minutes.

Note: I made mini muffins and normal-size muffins. I baked the mini muffins for 15-20 minutes at 150°C and the normal muffins as explained in the directions above. The quantity above yielded 30 mini muffins and 12 normal-size ones. But if you decide to just make normal muffins, I think you should get about 20 of them from this amount of ingredients.

And now go enjoy your sweets! :D