Mini Almond Muffins with Stone Fruit Jam

These were mini almond muffins with stone fruit jam.

It was time for almond paste in the freezer to wake up and participate to my baking project. One of common recipes with almond paste is to make Italian-style cookies that take advantage of almond paste's nice chewy texture and rich almond flavor, but usually contain tons of sugar. I wanted to stay away from that direction. I found a recipe of almond muffins on a lovely blog, Italian Food Forever. The recipe called for almond paste and didn't sound too sugary. I adapted it and made some changes. I replaced regular sugar with coconut sugar as usual, and reduced the amount. My almond paste was 8 oz, so it was 1 oz extra. My almond paste was frozen, so I grated it with cheese grater and mixed into dry ingredients. Instead of standard size, I used mini muffin pans!

Another change was I made a hollow on each muffin top and filled with 1/2 teaspoon of American Spoon's stone fruit compote. I know almond and stone fruits (cherry, apricots and peach) are good friends!

And some almond slices on top, too.

I baked about 16 minutes, until I saw the edge of muffins became light brown.

They were delightful! They were moist and bouncy. Lovely lemony and almond-y! The stone fruit compote was concentrated to jam and added a fruity sweet and sour touch. Crunchy almond toppings were another lovely tough, too. Mini size made them more occasions to enjoy not just only for breakfast but also afternoon tea time, three-minute-break, and after-dinner-snacking. Simply they were tasty. We couldn't help but have a little bite of them anytime!