36. Summer Berry Muffins

Summer is well and truly on its way. Its been warm and sunny basically all week with blue skies most days. It has been absolutely gorgeous. Just a shame we’ve been stuck at work! Hopefully these muffins will help you bring a little bit of summer inside even if you, like me, end up stuck inside unable to enjoy the weather. Thanks to Susie for the inspiration, she made some summer berry muffins last week and they just looked so good I couldn’t resist having a go.

These are a ridiculously easy make. No fancy techniques involved, nothing complicated here. Just some good tasty muffins to enjoy the British summer time with. Summer berries are great aren’t they? For this recipe you can either select your own mix of your favourite berries, or cheat like I did and go to the frozen aisle and get a bag of mixed summer berries and just defrost the amount I need. There’s still half a bag left if I want to make these again or just have them with some yoghurt or something. Tasty.

These are so easy you basically have no excuse not to give them a go this weekend. Let me know how you get on and I hope you enjoy!

Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients

• 120g butter, melted

• 150g golden caster sugar

• 240g self raising flour

• 2 eggs

• 140ml buttermilk (or 140ml milk and a tbsp of lemon juice mixed and left to stand for 15 minutes)

• 160g mixed summer berries

• 100g white chocolate chips/chopped white chocolate

• 2-3 tbsp lemon juice

• 70g icing sugar

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 190C. Line or grease a muffin tray.

2. In a bowl mix together the buttermilk and eggs. Add in the melted butter (cooled, don’t scramble your eggs with really hot butter!)

3. Sift the flour and fold it into your wet ingredients. Fold in the sugar too.

4. Gently fold in your berries and white chocolate chips.

5. Fill your muffin tray evenly with your mixture and sprinkle a little extra sugar on the top of each.

6. Bake for 25-30 minutes until golden brown.

7. Allow to cool.

8. Mix together the icing sugar and just enough lemon juice that it becomes drizzlable (is that a word?), but still a bit thick.

9. Drizzle your icing over your cooled muffins and allow to set before you pick one up and get immensely sticky fingers!

10. Enjoy!

22. Banana Coconut Muffins

Now I’m studying at Le Cordon Bleu, I don’t get an awful lot of time to bake just for fun, rather than practicing for exams. So I wanted to make something new for you guys, but something pretty easy. Muffins are definitely easy! I put a question out on my instagram story a few days ago and got some great ideas of what to make over the next few weeks, but I decided to start with my friend Beth’s suggestion “something with bananas”. Easy enough!

I have done banana and chocolate chip muffins on the blog before, so I decided to change it us and use coconut for something different. I’ve not used coconut much before to be honest, but I’m kinda enjoying coconut milk these days (Lactose intolerance life, wooooo), so thought I’d give it a go in my baking. These turned out pretty small as I made them in cupcake size rather than muffin, mostly because I wasn’t thinking, and partially because that’s what I had to hand. Either way, no matter the size, these turned out very tasty!

Makes 12 cupcake sized muffins

Ingredients

• 200g (7oz) flour

• 1 tbsp baking powder

• 1 tsp cinnamon

• 70g (2.5oz) butter, melted

• 80g (2.8oz) demerara sugar (plus extra to sprinkle on top)

• 125ml coconut milk or normal milk

• 75g desiccated coconut

• 1 egg, beaten

• 2 medium bananas, mashed

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C.

2. In a bowl combine the flour, baking powder, sugar, desiccated coconut and cinnamon.

3. Make a well in the middle and pour in the milk, melted butter and egg. Fold these in to the dry ingredients until well combined.

4. Add in the mashed banana (you want it mashed as well as possible!) until well mixed in.

5. Divide the mix into a lined cupcake or muffin tray and sprinkle some demerara sugar on top of each one.

6. Bake for 25-30 minutes until risen and golden.

7. Allow to cool a little before eating!

13. Spiced Chocolate Chip Muffins

Cinnamon is just SO GOOD. Whenever I want to make my bake a little more interesting, my hand reaches for the cinnamon just as easily as it reaches for the vanilla. Cinnamon is one of those flavours that a couple of people hate, and I simply don't understand at all. Other flavours that are bolder, e.g. ginger, coriander or aniseed, I can get why people wouldn't like them, but cinnamon is just so inoffensive. How anyone could dislike cinnamon I do not know.

With a couple of colder rainy days this week I decided that a spiced cake would help the cold feel cosy autumnal. There's a reason that pumpkin spice becomes a thing this time of year. There's nothing better than a little bit of spice to warm you up on a cold day! And I had chocolate chips to use up, so why not make them chocolate chip?

This cake also contains ginger and nutmeg to round out the spice profile, but I will undoubtedly be making my cinnamon cake with cinnamon cream cheese frosting in the next couple months to help conquer the autumn! Keep an eye out for it!

Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients

• 6oz (170g) butter

• 6oz (170g) golden caster sugar

• 6oz (170g) self raising flour

• 3 eggs

• 1 tsp ground ginger

• 1 tsp ground nutmeg

• 2 tsp ground cinnamon

• 5oz (150g) chocolate chips, preferably dark

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C.

2. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

3. Beat in the eggs.

4. Add in the flour and spices and mix until well combined.

5. Add in the chocolate chips and fold the mixture a couple times until they are evenly distributed.

6. Divide the mix between 12 muffin cases, until each case is about two thirds full.

7. Bake for 18-20 minutes until golden brown and when skewered, the skewer comes out clean.

8. Leave to cool a little, but best enjoyed warm to beat the autumn blues.

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9. Marble Muffins

Chocolate and vanilla. The staples of the sweet tooth world. The richness of chocolate, the sweetness of vanilla. They just work. It's no wonder that when people think of cake or ice cream or cookies they think of these two core flavours. What's better than a classic vanilla victoria sponge or a rich chocolate fudge cake or chocolate chip cookies? Not a lot when you're looking for a readily available baked good.

So this week I decided that I would celebrate the simple stuff and just make marble muffins and chocolate chip shortbread (recipe coming soon).

I like the aesthetic of marble muffins (although mine are less impressive than some...). The mix of chocolate batter and vanilla batter to combine and create one tasty muffin is a thing of beauty. The office agreed.

Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients

• 6oz (170g) butter

• 6oz (170g) caster sugar

• 6oz (170g) self-raising flour

• 3 eggs

• 2.5oz (70g) plain chocolate, melted

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 175C

2. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

3. Add in the eggs and flour, and combine.

4. Divide the dough in two and place half of it in another bowl.

5. Fold in the melted chocolate to the first batch of dough and the vanilla extract to the other.

6. Line a muffin tray with cases and alternate adding in a teaspoon of each mixture to each case. Chocolate vanilla, chocolate, vanilla etc.

7. Once done, grab a knife or skewer and gently swirl through the mixture in the muffin cases to give them the marbled effect.

8. Bake for 18-20 minutes.

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5. White Choc Chip Banana Muffins

When I asked my coworkers last week if they had any requests, I got a couple of quite specific and quite vague requests. One happened to mention they loved banana bread with walnuts, hint hint, nudge nudge. Another said they wanted everything (as long as it's not chocolate... unless it's white chocolate... please). Another asked for the chocolate espresso snowcaps again, which I happily provided (I love them too much not to fill that request). 

So I thought about how I could best fill my coworkers' requests. I can't make a banana bread at the moment, because I don't have a loaf tin in the new place. And I don't especially like walnuts. I also couldn't make everything, due to logistical problems, such as, I had only the weekend and a limited amount of tupperware to store it in. 

White chocolate chip banana muffins seemed the way to go.

They went down pretty well and certainly made the office happy, but I don't feel they've been my best bake. Still, who doesn't like some banana-y goodness in cake form?

Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients

• 4oz (115g) butter

• 4oz (115g) golden caster sugar

• 6oz (170g) self raising flour

• 2 eggs

• 1 banana, ripe or over ripe

• 3.5 oz (100g) white chocolate chips

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C.

2. Cream together the butter and sugar.

3. Add in the eggs and the banana, either mashed or cut into small pieces (doesn't matter too much either way if you're using an electric mixer).

4. Add in the flour, then the chocolate chips and vanilla extract.

5. Line your muffin tray with muffin cases and divide it up until your cases are about 2/3 full.

6. Bake for 18-20 minutes.

7. Let cool and enjoy!

No pictures... I got too excited about eating them...

1. Pear Nutmeg Muffins

So, two weeks into living in my new place and I've barely picked up a mixing bowl. Pretty appalling really. I can try and excuse it by saying I've been settling into my new place, finding a temp job, exploring London life. But, I've had so much time in the evenings to bake and I haven't I've just been lazy. Which is kinda what you need sometimes. But anyway.

New place, new blog, new recipe.

Well, new recipe to me anyway.

The blog Pastry Affair is one of my favourite baking blogs out there. She's been at it for years. YEARS. Scrolling through her backlog is one of my favourite things to do. It's so so good. I've made stuff from her site before, but she's American, so sometimes I have to adapt a recipe from her original one, as we can't get some of that stuff here in the UK. For example, this recipe called for applesauce. Americans use applesauce as a spread on toast or in cakes or as a dessert. In the UK we use it as a sauce with roast pork. It's a bit different. So as I trawled the aisles of Tesco looking for applesauce and found two options. Apple sauce with cider vinegar or Apple sauce with sage and cider vinegar. Neither seemed like they would work. I even checked the baby food aisle for pureed apple, but there was nothing. So whilst these muffins don't follow the original recipe (which you can find here) they are still delicious.

Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups (200g) self-raising flour

• 1/4 tsp nutmeg

• Pinch of salt

• 2 large eggs

• 2 tbsp vanilla extract

• 1 cup (200g) light brown sugar

• 5 tbsp (70g) unsalted butter, melted

• 1/4 cup (60ml) vegetable oil

• 3 tbsp (45ml) apple juice

• 1 conference pear, thinly sliced

Method

1. Preheat oven to 190C

2. Mix the melted butter, vanilla, sugar, apple juice, oil and eggs in a bowl until smooth and well combined.

3. Add in your flour a bit at a time, folding it in, and then add your nutmeg and salt.

4. Distribute the batter between 12 muffin cases.

5. Add your sliced pear pieces into the top of your batter (as below). If you can slice your pear thin enough you can try and shape them into roses, as I did for a couple (and sort of failed), or just stick them in.

6. Bake for 18-20 minutes until tops are golden brown and bounce back. Serve hot or at room temperature.

Some roses were more successful than others...

New place means a new oven, which meant that unfortunately I turned my temperature dial just a little too far. While still tasty, my muffins were browner than I'd meant for them to be. Oops.

For my first bake in the new place, these were pretty damn good. Hope you enjoy them!