Twelve muffins too many

The blood drive was back in Hornby this week, and as usual, I did some baking to make sure everyone had something to eat before donating. Fruit muffins (p28) sounded like a good idea. It's a fairly standard muffin recipe, with various suggestions for what kind of fruit to add. I chose blueberries - one of my favourite fruits, and available frozen all year round.

Like most muffins, these were pretty quick to whip up. You mix up an egg, some oil, sugar and milk in a large bowl, then add the dry ingredients and the fruit, and carefully fold it all together. There's cinnamon in the standard recipe, something you'd expect in an apple muffin perhaps, but I'd never come across a blueberry and cinnamon combination before. I was quite keen to find out how it tasted .

Mine ended up being slightly overmixed, owing to a typical Robyn error - I misread the ingredients and put only one cup of flour in. It was only when I noticed how runny the mixture was that I checked again and realised I'd been reading the flour quantity on a different recipe. I had to add the second cup of flour and mix it again.


The recipe made twelve muffins, which was fine, as I had exactly twelve people booked to donate blood. Since I usually have extras, I'd have to carefully guard my muffins from non-donors so noone missed out. Or so I thought.

On the same day as I brought in my muffins, we were given a whole box of large, tasty Original Foods muffins of various flavours. So as it turned out, the blood donors all got muffins without any effort from me - and so did everyone else.


I think I was the only person to eat one of my blueberry muffins before donating. That's not to say they didn't get eaten, of course - they all disappeared over the course of the next two days. With enthusiasm, too: they were really good muffins. I liked the cinnamon, and the large, juicy blueberries kept them beautifully moist.


This is a great standard muffin recipe - you could make all sorts of variations using this base. For my part, I recommend the blueberry.