Pistachio Chai Muffins

Here's another delicious recipe from Cooking Light magazine. These muffins are mildly sweet, with exotic spices and salty crunch. The chai flavor comes from tea bags broken open and mixed into the flour. The hardest part of this recipe by far is shelling the pistachios. It's well worth the effort though because these muffins would be nothing special without that crunchy salty topping.

Pistachio Chai Muffins

from Cooking Light

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 chai blend tea bags

1 cup buttermilk

1/4 cup melted butter

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract, divided

1 egg

1/3 cup shelled dry roasted pistachios, chopped

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1 tablespoon water

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Combine the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Cut open the tea bags and add to the flour mixture. In a separate bowl, combine the buttermilk, butter, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and egg and stir well with a whisk. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and add the wet ingredients, stirring just until moist.

Prepare a 12 cup muffin tin and divide batter evenly into the muffin cups. Sprinkle pistachios over the batter. Bake at 375 for 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centers comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes in pan.

Combine remaining 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, powdered sugar, and 1 tablespoon water, stirring until smooth. Drizzle evenly over muffins. YUM.

Comments

[Capal Hadid]

This really looks great! My family loves pistachios so I will more than likely try this over the holidays. I love the pictures you take. Very very helpful and beautiful too.

[Anna]

Just decided that I could check out what you're up to while eating lunch at my desk. Not sure why I haven't tried this before...
L is way into pistachios right now. We'll have to try these.