This week in my kitchen 17 :: Blueberry muffins

Capturing my love of whole foods, combined with the activity of a bustling kitchen.

A weekly collection of photos from the center of my home. 

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A little peep into some of this weeks activity...

• Farm fresh duck, hen and guinea fowl eggs
• Batch of muffins baked to use up the blueberries that were in danger of spoiling
• Rainbow chard from my sister's garden
• Poached chicken with saffron and chard and Persian barberry rice, plus the crunchy tah-dig...that I managed to break a tooth on last night and resulted in  dentist appointment this morning. My lovely Portuguese dentist who looks a lot like Matt LeBlanc is just as warm and friendly as the Joey Tribaianni character that he played so it wasn't such a bad experience...
• Making potato salad
• H who's now back in London, carving the roast chicken for supper
• Celebrating with visiting relatives
• This supper
• Sneaking a peep at the recipe book that was intended to be one of  H's birthday gifts but arrived too late

Blueberry muffins

I used my fool proof Madeira cake recipe with a couple of tweaks to make these moist fruity muffins.

To make lots (about sixteen) muffins you will need the following ingredients:

• eight ounces of flour (this works well with dove farm organic gluten free flour)
• one teaspoonful of baking powder
• five ounces of room temperature butter or dairy alternative 
• five ounces of sugar (I used golden caster)
• a little vanilla extract
• two large eggs
• five tablespoons of milk. I substituted plum sauce/syrup that I made last week with plums and maple syrup.
• Lots of blueberries. I probably used too many but didn't want any to go to waste, and I lovely fruity cakes

Method:

1. preheat the oven to 180c/350f or gas mark 4
2. prepare muffin tins by lining with paper cases
3. in a large bowl cream together the butter and sugar until the mixture is light and fluffy
4. beat the eggs in one at a time
5. sift the flour into the bowl and baking powder, unless you used self raising flour then fold into the mixture
6. add the vanilla extract and milk or fruit sauce until you have achieved a good dropping consistency
7. carefully fold in the fruit. I also adding a few stray cherries after moving the stones
8. put spoonfuls of the mixture into the cake cases 
9. bake for about twenty minutes or so until the muffins have risen and are golden brown on top. You can ensure they are ready when an inserted skewer comes out clean without any traces of cake batter.
10. Leave in the tin for a couple of minutes and then remove the muffins and place on a cooling tray.

I love when the berries burst open and you get a mini explosion of sweet/sour juice when you bite into these little muffins...

joining with heather for her weekly blog hop....

coming?