Amanatto Green Tea Muffins

Amanatto is a Japanese traditional sweet made of beans such as azuki and snow peas.  The name may remind you of the stinky fermented soy beans, natto, but they are completely unrelated.  The beans are cooked in syrup, dried and then coated with sugar.  To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of these sweet beans.  When I was a kid, my grandparents often kept them in their snack can and offered them to me behind my mother's back, but I always refused.  I would have gladly accepted if they were chocolate or cookies.

My father, however, loves amanatto.  He brought one bag with him on his last visit and left it untouched.  Though I still don't like them much, I didn't want to waste them since they had made such a long journey.  So I used a tactic parents often use to make kids eat more vegetables: incorporate them into something more attractive.  So I put them in muffins.  The green tea muffin base was a perfect match for the sweet beans.  As both my husband and I enjoyed the muffins, one batch wasn't enough, and after the second round, the bag was empty.  More than 20 years later, I found a way to enjoy this Japanese confections.

Amanatto Green Tea Muffins   Print Recipe Quantity Ingredients 1 egg 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 cup oil 2/3 cup milk 1 Tbsp baking powder 1 Tbsp green tea powder 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour 1/2 cup amanatto Directions Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place baking cups in each cup in the muffin tin. (or lightly grease the cups, sprinkle flour, then shake off excess flour. ) In a large bowl, whisk the egg and sugar until the mixture becomes pale yellow. Mix in the oil, milk,  baking powder and green tea powder. Add the flour to the mixture and mix with a spatula until it's incorporated.  Fold in the amanatto. Add the mixture to the prepared muffin tin. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes. Check for doneness by inserting a toothpick near the center. If it comes out clean, it's done. Take out the muffins from the tin, and cool on a rack.   Yields 12 muffins