For some reason when I bake muffins with the fan on they sometimes grow noses. These are particularly nosy ones. They didn’t all turn out like this thank goodness, but I’m tempted to stick a couple of eyes on them and some whiskers perhaps.

I made this recipe up, just played around with the basic muffin ingredients. They don’t contain any sugar or butter, just oil and eggs, and lots of banana.

300g sf flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 1/2 very ripe bananas, mashed
2 eggs
4 tbps sunflower oil
200ml milk
3 tbsp honey and lemon (something I bought by mistake instead of just honey)90g chopped dates
40 raisins (for Ivy’s benefit, might just stick to dates next time)

Mash the bananas. Mix together the flour, bp, dates and raisins, make a well and add the eggs, milk and oil, mix well. Add the bananas and honey.
Bake for about 20 minutes at 180, with the fan for noses or at a higher temperature without the fan for regular muffins.

Discovered this recipe a few years back, as I’m not a huge fan of beetroot and was looking for palatable ways of using it up when we got it our veg box. The muffins are surprisingly light and using the beetroot makes such sense as, like carrots, they’re a high-sugar root vegetable. It’s from Jill Dupleix originally, but I’ve made a few minor adjustments. In fact, with this batch I used buttermilk as we had some hanging around in the fridge, and it worked well…. but I’ll give the more standard recipe here.

Preheat the over 180C (or 160C fan). Put 12 paper cases in a muffin tin.

Sift together:
75g cocoa powder
180g plain flour
2 t baking powder
Stir in:
200g caster sugar

With a food processor, blend 250g cooked beetroot until as smooth as possible.
Add:
3 eggs, one at a time
1 t vanilla essence
200ml corn oil

Pour the wet beetroot mix into the dry mix. Mix until smooth and combined.

Divide between the muffin cases and bake for 30 mins.

Cool on a rack, then dust with icing sugar for serving. Or not.

I have wanted to try making something sweet with beetroot for a while, I never used to like the stuff at all until Lawrence introduced me to beetroot and cheese sandwiches. This recipe is from the Riverford cookbook you can use carrots instead or a mix of both I guess. The beetroot looks so beautiful when it’s grated and added to the mix, I wish it kept that bright red/purple look once it was cooked. It’s very simple to make and bakes very evenly with a lovely colour, the texture very moist and you really can taste the beetroot, which I like – nothing worse than making a cake with ingredients for the sake of it and all you taste is sugar. I added a bit of cinnamon by the way, I think it needed something extra, perhaps nutmeg would work too?

So I also decided to have a go at making muffins, English ones that is. The intention was to make them early and have them for brunch but we decided to go to the Tate in the morning so it turned into afternoon tea. I’d never realised that they were cooked on the top in a heavy saucepan – I was convinced it wouldn’t work and the insides would be gooey dough once I cut them open – but they weren’t, they were perfect! I don’t think I’ll ever buy a pack of muffins again, very simple and just half a bag of flour, some salt, yeast and bit of sunflower oil. Oh, and dusting with semolina to create that lovely crisp texture on the outside is essential. I followed the recipe in River Cottage Bread book:

500g white bread flour
325g warm water
10g salt
5g dried yeast
drizzle of sunflower oil
semolina for dusting

Mix the dry ingredients, add the water and combine until it reaches a sticky dough then add the oil and turn out on to a surface to knead – the key is in the kneading (Daniel Stevens’ book explains all the methods very well) and leave until doubled in size, took about an hour for me. Then deflate the dough and divide into 9 pieces, shape each into a round (again, research this), flatten to about 1-2cm, cover in semolina and leave on a board covered in a plastic bag until doubled in height. Heat a heavy bottomed saucepan (even better if you have a Rayburn or Aga) over a medium heat and carefully place about 3 muffins at a time in the pan. Cook on one side for a minute or two then turn, cook for a further 10 minutes turning occasionally. Leave to cool on a wire rack.

Cut open, toast and pile up some poached eggs on top (with a sneaky bit of cheese in between) or keep it simple with loads of butter and some Marmite. So rewarding!

It’s the end of the Twelve Days of Christmas tonight, so I better do this quick before it’s no longer seasonal.

I’ve never been a huge fan of mincemeat or mince pies, but you’ve got to make them right? I did some mince pies again this year, again using a handy Delia mincemeat recipe as really, it’s so easy, there’s no excuse to buy it. After the mince pies, I had some left over, so mincemeat muffins seemed a good solution. Jo gave me this recipe, which seems similar to this one on jamieoliver.com, but in useful metric measurements.

300g sr flour
1 tsp bp
1 tsp mixed spice
100g soft light brown sugar
175g mincemeat
1 egg, lightly beaten
100g butter, melted
175ml buttermilk
1 tbps milk
2 tsp demerara sugar

Preheat oven 200C.

Mix flour, bp, mixed spice (I used some ground allspice, ground cinnamon and ground nutmeg; up to you really – all those things are suitable) and brown sugar.

In separate bowl mix mincemeat, egg, melted butter, buttermilk and milk and add to dry ingredients. Mix briefly.

Spoon into muffin cups or greased muffin tin and sprinkle with demerara sugar. Bake for 18-20 minutes.

Cool in tin for 10 mins before turning out.

Very nice. Though not quite as nice as Jo’s cranberry muffins.

Oh, and on the buttermilk issue. It’s not that easy to get, and if you can get it, it tends to be cultured buttermilk, which is not unlike runny live yogurt. So I’m thinking you could probably use yogurt instead if you can’t get buttermilk (and water it down a bit with milk if it’s too thick). The cultured buttermilk is weird stuff. Real, traditional buttermilk is the liquid you drain off after you’ve churned cream to make butter – it’s not cultured at all, and it more resembles milk than yogurt. I’ve never seen anything like real buttermilk for sale anywhere; I suppose there’s not the demand for it.

When we ran the Birmingham Half Marathon in October this year Lawrence and I each received a jar of cranberry sauce – seeing as we won’t eat meat on Christmas day I decided to use it to make some Christmassy muffins. My Muffins Galore book has a recipe for jam filled muffins so I used that. They have a lovely cinnamon sugar coating which gives them a Christmas feel and are much like donuts (this was the general consensus). I took them to Dan and Fran’s Christmas party last weekend and they were received well. Although my contribution paled into the background against the amazing homemade spread that Dan and Fran had created. It all looked so perfect too! Saffron buns, ginger biscuits, mince pies… etc… etc.

Muffins are so simple to make, these need a little tweaking though – the jam/sauce sinks and can spill out of the bottom when you remove them from the tin. When I made the second batch I put more batter into the base of each mould before adding the sauce, previously it was too near the bottom. You still need to be careful when getting them out of the tin, which is why paper or silicon cases are handy.

Makes 12 regular-sized muffins or 36 mini muffins

250g SF flour
1 tsp baking powder
50g butter
80g caster sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
225ml milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
Jam/ cranberry sauce

Topping
50g butter
1 tsp ground cinnamon
50g granulated sugar (although I used soft brown sugar which is think is better)

Oven at 200 degrees, grease or line 12 cup muffin tin.
Mix the flour and baking powder in a large bowl, rub in the butter until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar.
In a separate bowl mix the eggs, milk and vanilla and pour into dry ingredients, mix briefly until just combined.
Put a spoonful (or two in my case) o the batter in to each muffin cup, add about 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of sauce to each then top with batter. Make for 8-10 minutes or until well risen and golden. Cool in the tin for a few minutes then cool on wire rack.
For the topping, melt the butter and brush over each warm muffin then roll in the cinnamon and sugar mix (this is partly what gives them the donut feel). They have a lovely golden glow to them, especially if you use brown sugar for the top.

There’s a theme here.. more gingerbread, by conincidence.
These are lovely and moist and easy as with most muffins. They are lovely warm of course and even with a bit of custard, yum.

250g sf flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch of grated nutmeg
150g soft light brown sugar
2 tbs golden syrup
1 tbs black treacle or molasses (I had treacle)
85g butter, cut into small pieces
175ml milk
1 egg lightly beaten

Oven at 190 degrees, grease 10 cups of a 12 cup muffin tin
Mix the flour, bicarb, salt, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar in a large bowl.
Put the golden syrup, treacle, butter and about 1/3 of the milk in a saucepan and heat gently until the butter has melted and it’s all blended together then stir in the rest of the milk followed by the egg (let it cool a little before egg goes in – although the milk should cool it down).
Add the dry ingredients, and combine. Spoon into the muffin tin and back for about 20 minutes or until well risen and firm to touch.
Cool in the tin for about 10 minutes before turning out.

So in the last few weeks leading up to the ‘due date’ I need to be eating lots of energy food – perfect excuse to make a load of flapjacks! These are banana, with honey rather than golden syrup – so kind of healthy. Flapjacks so often have hydrogenated fat in them if you buy the shop kind – yuk.

The lemon and poppy seed muffins are delicious – not sure they’ll last long with Lawrence around – lemon is his thing.

We had our first pregnant lady meeting outside of NCT class yesterday, which I hosted, hence the totally valid reason to make lots of treats and get Grandma’s Conran tea set out. Everyone probably thought they’d stepped back in time to the 1950s, if only i could fit into my 50s dress at the moment, it would have finished off the look perfectly.

Flapjacks are easy but here’s the recipe for the muffins:

Makes 12
Finely grated zest of 2 lemons
225g caster sugar
300g self-raising flour
2 tbs poppy seeds
1 egg, lightly beaten
225ml milk
60g butter melted

For the lemon syrup:
100g icing sugar
juice of 1 lemon

Oven at 200, grease 12 cup non-stick muffin tin (not paper cases – they will absorb the lemon syrup at the end)
Mix 2 tsp of the lemon zest and 2 tbsp of the sugar in small bowl and set aside
Mix the flour, poppy seeds and remaining sugar in large bowl. In a separate bowl mix remaining lemon zest, lemon juice, egg, milk and melted butter. Add this to dry mixture until combined.
Spoon batter into tins then sprinkle tops with reserved sugar and lemon zest.
Bake for about 15-20 minutes or until golden and well risen.
Meanwhile mix the icing sugar and lemon juice. Spoon this over the hot baked muffins and leave to cool in the tin. (I pricked the tops to make sure it soaked in)

Yum!