Muffins - Fast and Fantastic

The title of my post is actually the name of a book by Susan Reimer, unsurprisingly about making great muffins quickly!

Susan is the wife of one of Husband's colleagues from Edinburgh and we always laughed that this little book had sold more copies than those of all the academics put together (until a little one about Star Wars obviously...!).  I just found mine again in a box in the garage at the weekend and spent Saturday evening half watching a film and half reading the intro and Notes on Muffin Making.  Susan came to the UK from North America and was thrown by the different use of weight and volume, different types of flour and different temperatures so she experimented until she got what she wanted.  These experiments often made their way to New College and Dr Reimer's office was the place to be in the morning.

I never really got on with my oven in the UK, not sure why, and have various scribbles in my copy to adjust times, temps etc.  There are all kinds of notes from Susan herself to adjust this if using that etc, which all helps.  This afternoon we went with the Summer Fruit Muffins and they turned out to be even lighter and fluffier than any I've made recently.  I managed to make enough for everyone for afternoon tea, then enough for packed lunches tomorrow.  I guess I'll be making more in the morning!

Blueberry Muffins

Last night the temps here didn't drop much below 30c all night.  Combine that with a sweaty toddler who only likes to sleep nose to nose and I didn't sleep much!  I finally did fall asleep then slept through the alarm and missed church - oops!  Thankfully Husband (who never seems to be bothered by any of the Small People) had a reasonable sleep and offered to take everyone to the pool again to give me a chance to try and catch some zzz's.  Marvellous.  It took them a ridiculously long time to get organised but they finally left, hoping to practice their strokes for their Swim Carnivals this week.  They had a great time and only came home because Smallest Boy actually fell asleep in the pool!  After their exhertion we planned a fairly chilled out afternoon and just aswell because the thunder and rain finally came, bringing some fresh air at last.  The temps have dropped 15c and I reckon we'll all sleep tonight.

Planning ahead for the week I realized we were out of lunch stuff, so bearing in mind my resolution to stop buying lots of packaged, processed food for the kids packed lunches, I did some more baking.  Today I had frozen Blueberries to use up so whipped up a batch of beautifully moist muffins, huge enough to satisfy even the hungriest Boy at recess! 

It's another good recipe -

4 cups Self-Raising Flour
1 cup Raw Sugar
4 Eggs
1 tsp Vanilla Essence
2/3 cup Melted Butter
2 cups Sour Cream
2 cups Frozen Blueberries

I mixed the sugar, eggs, sour cream, melted butter and vanilla essence then sifted the flour, mixing it in lightly, before adding the blueberries.  I baked them at 180c for 25 mins.  You could add some lemon zest for an extra zing but my lot always complain if I use lemon.   I got 12 large and 6 medium muffins out of this, those of you with sensibly sized families might want to half the recipe!

As always, enjoy with a lovely cuppa, preferably somewhere quiet!