The beautiful yellow color in these muffins comes from saffron. They are a muffin version of the Swedish Lucia Bun, a beautiful yellow not-to-sweet bun that contains raisins or currants. I got the recipe from the 101 Cookbooks blog, and since I had all of the ingredients, decided to give them a try.
Since saffron is a key ingredient, and is quite expensive, it may be the deciding factor on whether you make these buns. I had some left over from a delicious risotto recipe, and it's just been sitting around, so I decided to use it - luckily I had just enough.
I didn't have a mortar and pestle, so I pulverized the sugar and saffron in a coffee grinder. It did kind of a weird thing to the sugar, almost turning it to powdered sugar - but it seemed to work ok for the recipe.
The color of the liquid portion of the mix is amazing. Avoid getting any saffron on your counters because it will stain, almost like the yellow part of a lily when it gets on your clothes.
The buns have a really interesting flavor - not very sweet base, definitely tasting of saffron, which is offset by the sweetness of the golden raisins. Not for everyone, but I really liked them, especially slightly warmed with butter and a drizzle of honey. I served them with a dinner of bratwurst with blueberry chutney, and zucchini, and then had them again for breakfast with my tea.
I'm very interested in trying more Swedish recipes for their low sugar content and beautiful presentation - stay tuned!
