Say It With Muffins

27 October 2011

Autumn has well and truly arrived in Berlin. The days are getting blustery and slightly damp, perfect weather for some cosy afternoon home baking. As my former colleagues from National Museums Scotland will tell you, I have a slight obsession with baking muffins. In the run up to my wedding I was testing out different flavours for our muffin pyramid, and they had the benefit of being my - very willing - guinea pigs. 

But who to bake for now? If we ate all the muffins that I ever baked ourselves, our family would be rolling down the streets. Part of the baking has always been about keeping an afternoon tea’s worth to ourselves and giving the rest away - half the pleasure of baking is other people enjoying the tasty treats that come out of it. 

Since our immediate neighbour, the Jewish Museum Berlin, is currently celebrating it’s 10th anniversary, I decided to challenge myself to icing up an anniversary muffin composition, which turned out very well (if I do say so myself):

We kept a couple of un-iced ones for the boy and ate the JMB ourselves, then delivered the remaining muffins next door after a quick repair job to the A and the logo - the boy decided that he’d fancy some icing after all!

By the way, for the wedding we (big help from my mother and sister) ended up baking 120 muffins in five different flavours: banana, blueberry, orange, coconut and chocolate & beetroot. As with any baking in our house, they were all gluten free.

Most people would think it crazy to spend the afternoon before your wedding mass producing muffins, but you can’t take a girl away from here baking. And, as you can see below, we also had a bit of fun along the way.

The most popular of the five flavours at the wedding proved to be the blueberry ones (though banana are my personal favourite), so here’s the recipe. It may be difficult to get fresh blueberries at this time of year, but you can also use frozen ones or substitute with tinned or frozen cherries or raspberries.

Ingredients

• 250 g (gluten free) flour
• Pinch of salt
• 1 Tbsp (gluten free) baking powder
• 150g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 150ml Sunflower oil
• 150ml sour cream
• 1tsp vanilla extract
• 150g fresh or frozen blueberries

Directions

1. Pre-heat over to 180°C/370°F/Gas 5
2. Stir together all the dry ingredients in a bowl and the wet ingredients in another bowl (except the blueberries)
3. Stir together all the wet ingredients in another bowl.
4. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, then fold in the blueberries
5. Line a muffin tray with 12 muffin cases and spoon in mixture
6. Bake for 20-25 mins (I always check after 15 and then bake for another 5 mins at a time)
7. Allow to cool for at least 5 mins before removing from muffin tray
8. Allow muffins to cool fully before decorating them with icing (I speak from experience!)

Eat and enjoy!