Banana, Chocolate and Butterscotch Muffins for celebrating THE END OF OUR DEGREES

WE DID IT. I have no idea how, or what we'll get out of it (degree classifications don't come out for another month...), but in the meantime I'm catching up on sleep and all the things I've had to put off to write essays, like cooking and painting and walking and watching TV and BAKING! Fraser's calling it my rehabilitation, and I'm enjoying it immensely. So this weekend I made these...

Banana, chocolate and butterscotch muffins. They're based on a Nigella recipe - I first made them years ago with Andy, and they're sooooo good. You can vary the flavours however you like - I intend to try them with blueberries, or you could be super indulgent and go for a double chocolate chip variation.

Ingredients (makes 12):
- 3 ripe bananas
- 2 eggs
- 125ml vegetable oil
- 250g plain flour
- ½tsp bicarb. of soda
- 1tsp baking powder
- 100g caster sugar
- 100g Green&Blacks butterscotch chocolate
- 50g butterscotch pieces

1. Start by preheating your oven to 200°C, and lining a muffin tin with paper cases.
2. Mash the bananas (I find the best things for this are a fork and a casserole dish lid), or tell a friend if they'll do it for you they can have the first muffin. Works like a charm.
3. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the oil 'til they've come together. Add the flour, bicarb, baking powder and sugar and stir well.
4. Tip in the mashed banana, along with the butterscotch and chocolate (chopped), and stir through.
5. Dollop the mixture into the muffin cases. Don't worry if you make a bit of a mess - I seem to be incapable of doing it without getting cake mix all over the tray/my hands/the cat...

6. Bake for 20-25 minutes. I recommend you check them after 20, and if they're not done turn the tray around to make sure they get an even final blast. Once they're out, they'll need at least 10 minutes to cool before you demolish them - if you can wait that long...

The Infamous Blueberry Muffins

Last August I baked some rather lovely blueberry muffins. I took some photographs and they all got eaten but I didn’t get around to blogging about them. And that would have been the whole story, had I not uploaded this photograph to Facebook...

Cue Bryony’s obsession with the blueberry muffins.

I have lost count of the number of times she’s asked me to blog the blueberry muffins. And today I flicked through the photos and thought hey, those blueberry muffins look super nice. I should make blueberry muffins again... So after yet another library day, I came home tonight and made blueberry muffins.

This is based on a recipe from a cookbook I picked up in a charity shop last summer for about £2. I went on a bit of a charity shop rampage and bought about four cookbooks for a tenner. Not too shabby. I’ve made a few of the recipes in this one and they’ve been a little hit and miss but this one definitely worked. I used Yeo Valley Blueberry Yoghurt with a hint of Lime. Mainly because of their ridiculous but awesome 

farmer-boyband advert from a couple of years ago.

So yes, to make 12 muffins, here's what you need:

225g plain flour

1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda

½ teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon of allspice

115g caster sugar

3 large egg whites

3 tablespoons of margarine. Or softened butter. I used butter. Naturally.

5 tablespoons of blueberry yoghurt

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

100g of fresh blueberries

And here’s what you do:

1.  Preheat the oven to 190 degrees and put 12 paper cases in a muffin tin.

2. Sift the flour, bicarb, salt and half the allspice into a large mixing bowl. Add 8 tablespoons of the sugar and mix it all together well.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg whites. Add the margarine/butter, the yoghurt and the vanilla extract and mix it all together properly. Stir in the blueberries, then add this mixture to the dry ingredients. Stir until just combined - the cookbook says to make sure it’s not “over mixed.”

4. Spoon the mixture into the muffin tins. Mix the remaining sugar with the remaining allspice and sprinkle all over the muffins.

5. Place in oven and bake for 25 minutes, or until they’re golden and risen.

 And just in case you'd forgotten, here are the Yeo Valley Farmers. HA.

I'M SORRY

For my terrible lack of posting this week. I went home, got ill, came back to uni, stayed up all night to queue to sign up for courses for next year (Bryony brought me vodka pasta at 2 am and it was wonderful.) And then we nearly got eaten alive by massive freaking bugs in a field. True story.

But to make up for it, HERE is a recipe for the savoury muffins I baked while I was home. 

These are awesome and I crave them more than I probably should. This is like fancy, easy bread you can make really quickly. This recipe is for Broccoli and Cheese muffins and it makes about twelve of them.

What you need for 12 muffins:

275g Plain White Flour (I used Dove's farm gluten free flour but this will work with normal flour)

3 tea spoons of Baking Powder.

2 tea spoons of Sugar.

1/2 tea spoon of Salt.

Pinch of Chili Powder.

1 tea spoon of Mustard (the fancier the better).

3 Eggs.

200ml of Milk.

100g of grated Cheddar Cheese.

100g of cooked Broccoli, separated into manageable florets. (i.e. those little broccoli trees. You know that's how you think of them too...)
2 cloves of Chopped Garlic.

Fresh Parsley and/or Chives.

Olive Oil.

12 Cupcake cases.

What you gotta do:

1. Pre heat oven to 190 degrees Celsius.

2. Mix the flour, the baking powder, the sugar, the salt and the chili powder together in a bowl. 

3. Melt the butter in a pan. Let it cool a little bit.

4. Whisk the eggs and milk together. Add in the slightly cooled butter.

5. Put all this into the flour bowl, along with mustard, herbs, garlic, broccoli and most of your cheddar, leaving behind about a handful.

6. Gently mix it all together. Don't beat it, you gotta "retain air." How fancy.

7. Put your cupcake cases into muffin tins. Brush their insides with a little olive oil so the finished muffins don't stick to them - the cheese makes these extremely solid and they tend to fuse to their cupcake cases without the olive oil.

8. Split the mix between the cup cake cases. Sprinkle the remaining grated cheddar on the tops of these muffins. 

9. Bake for 20-30 minutes. EAT.