blueberry muffins

There hasn’t been much exciting baking going on this week. The weather is so beautiful, after work I am swimming, not baking!! I hope to do some more in the weekend. But, I did make these muffins last night for my husband’s lunch box. I freeze them and he takes one or two in his lunch each day.



I usually stick to a pretty plain bran style muffin with mashed banana and some dried fruit, but last night I sort of followed a Bill Granger recipe for berry muffins. I only had about a cup of frozen blueberries, so added some craisins to make them a little more full of fruit. They had buttermilk and yoghurt in them which helps make them tender. I didn’t have any buttermilk, so I added a few teaspoons of white vinegar to a cup of milk. This sours the milk to make it like buttermilk – lemon juice has the same effect. The muffins were nice for a change. They had some wholemeal flour in them – enough to fool my husband into thinking that they are healthy!!

Last night’s dinner was courgette and feta fritters. I used a recipe from Nigel Slater’s book “Kitchen Diaries”. The book is a great read - it actually reads as if it is his cooking diary for the year (a bit like a blog in a book – I hope that makes my blog a book in a blog if you know what I mean!!). I have challenged myself to make something each month from it from the corresponding Northern hemisphere month (ie use a July recipe in January, August recipe in February etc). These fritters from the July chapter had great flavour, but the only thing holding them together were a couple of eggs, so they kind of fell apart. I wouldn’t make that recipe again, even though the taste was great –especially with some of my home made tamarillo relish!!

With the fritters we had an avocado and cherry tomato salad with a balsamic dressing (1/4c good evo, 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar, juice of a lemon, 1 tsp each Dijon mustard and brown sugar and sea salt and pepper). Very tasty and summery!