Muffins with plums and bacon

Today I would like to present a savoury plums and bacon muffins. This recipe comes from Carol Pastor '75 best - ever muffins' cookbook and originally is called devils on horseback. Why ? Because their main ingredient is the popular starter, fresh dates wrapped in bacon and fried. As I couldn't get fresh dates anywhere I replaced them with fresh plums. 

The muffins were very moist and dense with sweet and salty flavour. They were packed with sweet juicy bits of plum, crisp chunks of bacon and plenty herbs. 

Ingredients for 8 muffins:

• 225g flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp caster sugar
• 12 slices of bacon
• 24 wedges of plums
• 2 tbsp olive oil for frying
• 1 tbsp butter for frying
• 2 tsp oregano + some for decoration
• 115g soft herb and garlic cream cheese
• 175ml milk
• 75g butter melted
• 2 eggs
• ground black pepper

Cut the slices of bacon in half the get 24 slices. Wrap each plum wedge into a bacon. You can use a toothpick to hold them together.

In a frying pan heat the oil and butter over a medium heat. Add the bacon rolls and saute them turning them in the juices until they are crisp, about 4 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool down.

Sift the flour, baking powder, oregano and sugar into a bowl.

Preheat the oven to 180C. Line muffin tin with paper cases.

Melt the butter and set aside to cool down.

When the content of the frying pan is cool enough to handle, slice each of the bacon-wrapped plums into small discs. Return them to the frying pan. 

In a separate bowl beta in the cream cheese into a milk, with the butter and eggs. Pour into a dry ingredients and stir until part blended. Scrape the bacon and plum slices with any of the cooking juices into the batter and stir until evenly combined. Do not over mix.

Divide the batter between the paper cases and sprinkle with oregano. Bake for 25 minutes until well risen.

Enjoy !