Blueberry and Oat Muffins

Tags

blueberries, muffins, oats

How is it nearly 2013? Seriously, the years seem to fly by quicker and quicker every year! I’ve never really properly sat down and wrote ‘resolutions’ but this year I decided that in an attempt to get more things done, I would write a list of goals that hopefully will be achievable for 2013.

Before the new year rolls round I just had time to bake these muffins. I made them for breakfast which was brilliant as they kind of felt healthy because of the oats and blueberries.

Now, this is the first time I have ever made muffins, I know! When I worked that out I looked around and thought, how have I never made muffins?

And then I realized that I used a cupcake recipe and just put the mixture into cupcake cases. This I can definitely say is cheating…

This got me onto thinking what is the difference between a cupcake and a muffin. The texture and flavour is different to a muffin and the reason for this (I think) is that a muffin doesn’t have butter but vegetable oil and alot of milk. Also, the techniques are different, for example you don’t cream butter and sugar together and you don’t want a muffin mixture to be completely smooth.

The wonderful thing about including blueberries in the mixture is they split in the oven and you get these vivid streaks of purple running through the muffin.

And, the oats add extra texture when you bite into them.

They’re lovely and fluffy which seems to me to be the best texture for a breakfast muffin (or an anytime muffin) to be honest!

Ingredients:

2 eggs

150g caster sugar

50g demerara sugar

250ml milk (semi-skimmed or whole milk)

125ml vegetable oil (or sunflower oil)

1tsp salt

350g self-rasing flour

1tsp baking powder

50g oats

150g blueberries 

Recipe (The Little Elf Bakery)… makes 14 muffins

 

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius and line a baking tray with muffins cases. My muffin tray only held 12 muffin cases so I baked them first then just did two afterwards. Crack the eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk, then add the vegetable oil, milk and caster sugar and whisk again. Next add the self-raising flour, caster sugar, baking powder, salt, oats and demerara sugar and mix all the ingredients together, but the mixture shouldn’t be completely smooth. Pour in the blueberries and fold into the mixture until they are evenly distributed.

Spoon the mixture into the muffins cases until they are 3/4 full. This gives them room to expand in the oven. Sprinkle some oats over the top of the muffins then bake in the oven for 20 minutes or until they are golden brown on top. Take them out of the oven a place on a cooling rack.