Recipe Tuesday - Blueberry Muffins

A few years ago, at the bottom of the garden, we planted 3 blueberry bushes.  This year, they’ve come up trumps!  Yesterday, DH and I harvested 1.6kg of ripe blueberries and there are at least as many still on the bushes.  While I am hoping to freeze at least a kilogram, this morning I decided to make a double batch of blueberry muffins.

(The above photo was taken after I’d removed 250g for the muffins.)

After flipping through some recipe books and the BBC Good Food website, I decided to botch together a recipe.  (Why?  Because most of the ones I looked at required the addition of yoghurt or nuts or bananas.). Anyway, it worked!  This is my recipe.  I made 24 - the doubled quantities are shown in brackets.

Blueberry Muffins

Makes 12 (or 24)

Ingredients

1/2 cup vanilla sugar*. (1 cup)

2 cups plain/all purpose flour (4 cups)

1 tablespoon baking powder (2 tablespoons)

1/2 teaspoon salt (1 teaspoon)

1 cup milk (2 cups)

1/4 cup oil (1/2 cup)

1 egg, beaten (2 eggs)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract (2 teaspoons)

125g/4oz blueberries (250g/8oz)

1 tablespoon plain flour

Method

1. Preheat oven to 200C (425F).
2. Line the cups of your muffin pan with either silicone or paper liners.
3. In a food processor or mixer, combine the first 4 ingredients and give them a quick whiz to distribute the salt and baking powder.
4. Add the milk, the oil, the egg and the vanilla extract.  Blend until combined.
5. Place all but 12 (24) blueberries into a bowl.  Sprinkle over the flour and stir with your fingers until all is combined.+
6. Gently stir the flour coated blueberries into the muffin mix.
7. Fill each lined muffin cup 3/4 full, topping them up as evenly as possible if there is muffin mixture left.
8. Top each muffin with one of the saved blueberries.
9. Bake in your preheated oven for 20-25 minutes.
10. Remove from oven and decant onto a cake rack to cool.

Notes

* Vanilla sugar is easy to make at home.  Just bury a vanilla pod in a jar of castor sugar and leave it for at least 3 weeks before first use.  Replenish the sugar each time you use it.  The vanilla pod will continue to give off flavour for years.

+ Dredging your berries with flour will stop them sinking to the bottom of the muffins.

Enjoy!!!