July's Seasonal Recipe: Blueberry Muffins

More muffins to follow on from June's seasonal muffin recipe, but this time with yummy seasonal blueberries. This recipe is from Nigella- see here for the original.

Blueberry Muffins
Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients
280g self-raising flour
60g caster sugar
2 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
4 tbsp butter, melted
175ml milk
1 pack of blueberries (use Value/Basics ones as you can't taste any difference in muffins)
Pinch of salt

1. Wash and drain the blueberries, roll in a light coating of flour wrap in a tea towel and set aside to dry completely.

2. Preheat the oven to 210℃/425℉/Gas Mark 7. Line a muffin tin with 12 cases.


3. Sift the flour, salt, sugar and baking powder into a large bowl.


4. In a separate bowl beat the eggs, then add the melted butter and the milk.


5. Add the liquid ingredients into the flour mix and stir 10-15 times- do not over-stir or the muffins will become tough.


6. Fold in the blueberries and spoon into the muffin cases bake in the centre of the pre-heated oven for 15-20 minutes until golden and well-risen.

7. Remove and leave to cool for as long as you can resist!

June's Seasonal Recipe: Courgette and Raisin Muffins

This month's seasonal recipe comes from Annabel Karmel, who says it's a 'delicious way to get your child to eat more vegetables' or in my case, to pretend muffins are super healthy. Either way, they're delicious for sure!


I'm going to just leave you with a photo and a link to the recipe as I think the instructions are very clear and for me, the quantities worked perfectly: Annabel Karmel's Courgette and Raisin Muffins

Rocky Road Muffins

Tonight I am going to a friend's for dinner, so I made these rocky road muffins from emmyrabbit on allrecipes.co.uk:

I managed to resist trying one last night even though they smelled delicious! I made a big batch and have frozen some for next time I need a treat and don't have the time to make them, but inadvertently advertised this fact to the boyfriend, so maybe they won't be there for long...

I am trying to work out if I can get away with wearing my new thrift purchase skirt tonight (£3 in Dorothy Perkins). I am not yet ready to admit defeat and acknowledge the presence of autumn!

It got me thinking about a dress I was given that is an odd fit on top, but a beautiful pattern. I would like to try and either alter it or make it into a skirt, better get back to learning how to sew!

Summer Fruit Muffin (top)

This evening I made summer fruit muffins, adapted from Joy the Baker's delicious website: http://www.joythebaker.com/blog/2008/04/black-raspberry-muffins/

I had to adapt the recipe to Ikea's rather large and funny-sized, but beautiful cake cases:

And measurements that weren't in cups... Note to self, must buy some cup measurers!

My favourite 'thrifty tip' ('thip'?) is using frozen berries- much much cheaper than fresh ones and although a bit strangely flavoured on their own, perfect for baking.

I then tried to make some berry-flavoured icing with the juice from the frozen berry juice (another advantage of frozen berries) and icing sugar, but it came out a bit more Barbie than berry!

Attempt two resulted in a much more subtle berry taste and colour, which I then drizzled on the muffins:

This is not going to aid with the rapidly developing muffin top associated with my new desk-bound lifestyle! At least I'm inflicting them on all of my colleagues...