Cottage Cheese Muffins

I am a fan of Heidi Swanson's great 101 Cookbooks blog. She is a cookbook author and photographer and many of her recipes are gluten-free or can be adapted to be gluten-free, so I check it out regularly. I tried her version of Rose Elliot's "Sun Dried Tomato Cottage Cheese Muffin" recipe and it was indeed delicious, but I had problems with the outer edges of the muffins sticking to the paper cupcake liners. The next time I would make these I would try greasing my muffin pans and skipping the liners to see if they work better. I also didn't have soy flour on hand and used Bob's Red Mill baking mix instead, so perhaps this provided a greater adhesive character to my dough.

Nevertheless these are delicious little treats and made a good snack and breakfast food. They are savory rather than sweet like most of their muffin cousins, and would no doubt, as Heidi points out, make great cocktail snacks for a party. You can check out the recipe on Heidi's blog (as well as many other great recipes and food porn photos) or here below. Happy baking!

Sun-dried Tomato Cottage Cheese Muffin Recipe

You can use the flour of your choice in this recipe. The original recipe calls for soy flour (great for people looking for a gluten-free option), I use white whole wheat flour - unbleached all-purpose flour will work as well. To grind the almonds I gave them a whirl in my food processor. You are looking for a flour-like consistency - be sure to stop short of turning them into an almond paste.

1 cup plain cottage cheese (low-fat is fine)
3/4 cup parmesan cheese, freshly grated
1/4 cup flour (see headnotes)
1 cup almonds, very finely ground
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 cup sun-dried tomatoes (in oil), finely chopped
1/4 cup basil, finely chopped
1/4 cup water
4 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 400F degrees. Line a muffin pan with medium-sized paper baking cups, you'll need nine of them.

Put the cottage cheese into a bowl with all but 1/4 cup of the Parmesan cheese, the flour, ground almonds, baking powder, sun-dried tomatoes, basil, water, and eggs, and season with salt, then mix all together.

Spoon the mixture into the muffing cups 3/4 full, scatter with the remaining Parmesan, and bake for 30-35 minutes, or until set, risen, and golden brown. Serve as hot or at room temperature.

Makes 9 muffins.