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.

Afternoon Tea and Cupcakes

This refers back to December when we had afternoon tea of baked goats cheese with a festive salad to accompany, and lots of tea and cake. These are the cakes.

 

They're lemon and blueberry cupcakes, and are basically massive cheer-up cakes because they make you happy when you eat them. All of us had been struggling with work overload, so there was a need for something to make life that bit sweeter. It worked.

Ingredients:

- 6oz caster sugar

- 6oz butter

- 3 eggs

- 8oz gluten-free, self-raising flour

- 1/2 tsp baking powder

- 6oz blueberries

- zest 2 lemons

- juice one lemon

For the syrup:

- juice ½ lemon

- 2 tsp sugar

To decorate:

- more blueberries

- zest 1 lemon

- juice ½ lemon

- small mint leaves

- icing sugar

1. Beat together the butter and sugar until soft and creamy. My mum always says do it until you think it's ready, then do it some more, and this attitude is yet to fail me.

2. Add the eggs and incorporate into the mixture. Then sieve in the flour and baking powder, and fold it in carefully - using a metal spoon if possible.

3. Add the blueberries and lemon juice and zest, and stir carefully so everything gets properly mixed up. Stir this as little as possible, as you don't want to knock out the air you've worked into the cake.

4. Bake at 180°C in a preheated oven for 15-18 minutes, until they're golden and a cocktail stick inserted into the middle comes out clean.

5. While they're still warm, grab a small pan and mix together the ingredients for the syrup over a low heat. Using a cocktail stick, poke holes into the cakes and then drizzle the syrup over the top. Now let it all cool down and go drink a cup of tea.

6. Once it's all cooled, mix up some icing sugar with the lemon juice in a bowl. Dip the blueberries in, then use the icing to stick them onto the cakes. Stick a mint leaf in between them (looks awesome and gives a really refreshing taste), then grate over some lemon zest and finally dust over a sprinkle of icing sugar. Voila. Who needs to go somewhere fancy to eat fancy food?