So today Mark is on holiday and to avoid housework has offered to create a scrummy breakfast! Happy me!
Fresh baked blueberry muffins turned out to be my breakfast, they where delicious so I thought I would share with you the secret to a great start to the day. It takes about an hour start to finish, after that it’s all up to your self control how long they last.
So start by turning on your over to 200C/400F/GM6 and placing a shelf in the centre position.
Now take the largest mixing bowl you own and a measuring jug.
Into the mixing bowl sift:
+ 300g self raising flour
+ 1 teaspoon baking powder
Make sure you sift the flour, we want it light and dusty, and stir. Now take
+ 50g of cold butter
…and quickly cut it up into big chunks and drop it into the flour. Now just keep picking up a flour covered butter piece and chop it in half, keep going till all butter pieces are too small to find.
+ 80g caster sugar
+ 150g blueberries
Add the sugar and berries to the mix and give a last gentle stir and put aside.
Now in the jug put the following ingredients:
+ 2 eggs
+ 225ml of milk
+ 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
Now with a whisk or a fork give the contents a good whisk till the contents resembles very runny custard.
Now take a 12 cup muffin tin and place a paper/silicon mould in each space. If you don’t have any lining cases you can grease the tin.
Now timing is everything, take a big serving spoon, make a well in the flour and pour the contents of the jug into the well. Using the big spoon, gentle fold the dry ingredients into the wet ones. Use a scoop, lift and turn method, turn the bowl a degrees and scoop, lift and turn, repeat until the dry ingredients are at least damp. The trick here is to do as little mixing as is possible, it doesn’t matter about lumps or small lumps of flour, it will sort itself out in the oven.
Lastly without a moment’s hesitation, spoon the mixture into the muffin tin using another spoon to scrape the mixture from the big spoon. You need to be quick as the raising agents will have been activated by the liquid, we don’t want to miss any of that wondrous chemistry.
Once you have filled, place them straight into the hot oven. Bake for 20minutes or till well risen, golden coloured and firm to the poke. Cool for 5 minutes in the tin then remove them to a wire cooling rack to warm… then, and only then can the unceremonious devouring of poor helpless muffins occur!
Couple of notes, these muffins will be strange if you are used to supermarket muffins, as they will not be as sweet as you are used to.
Mark also said that he would love to take credit for the recipe but it is actually from a little book he highly recommends to all budding muffinologists called Muffins Galore by Catherine Atkinson ISBN978-0-7537-2018-9
Enjoy
Bark Time = everything and nothing 