Roasted Apricot and White Chocolate Muffins

I woke up early this morning so put the time to good use!  This recipe is in Australian measurements, my kitchen is decked out for both Aussie and British baking but if you need to convert any of the measurements then I find this conversion site pretty useful.

Roasted Apricot and White Chocolate Muffins
For The Roasted Apricots
1kg apricots, halved and stone removed
¼ cup brown sugar
For The Muffins
1 ½ cups plain flour
1 cup self raising flour
½ teaspoon bicarbonate soda
3/4 cup brown sugar
½ cup light olive oil
1 duck egg, lightly beaten
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
200g white chocolate, chopped
60g pecan nuts, roughly chopped

Preheat oven to 200°C.

To make the roasted apricots; place apricots on a tray lined with a baking sheet. Sprinkle with sugar and bake for 30 minutes or until soft.

To make the muffins; prepare 2 (12 hole) muffin tins either with olive oil spray or with paper liners. Sift flours, bicarbonate soda and cinnamon into a large bowl. Stir through sugar.

In a jug, combine olive oil, egg, vanilla extract and milk. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients. Pour in wet ingredients. Quickly combine using as few strokes as possible. (Mixture should still be a bit lumpy). Quickly fold in apricots, chocolate and nuts.

Spoon into muffin tins and bake for 20 minutes.

Makes 24 muffins
Adapted from The Australian Women's Weekly

My version is a bit different to the original, which included cinnamon and ginger but no chocolate.  If you would like to try the original then the recipe can be found here.