Yesterday the ‘chief tester’ and I went to the French markets in Parnell, Auckland – La Cigale.  I love strolling around this market and tasting different foods, and chatting to the growers and budding entrepeneurs.. You can do your weekly vegetable shopping, pick-up some amazing cheeses and wines, have a tasty brunch or just a great coffee!

One of the stalls I stopped by was all the way from Rotorua – Mamaku Blue. Last year my husband and I had spent the weekend in Rotorua and had stopped for a fresh Blueberry ice-cream there.

I bought a large tub of fresh juicy blueberries – there is something about buying direct from the grower that makes fruit & vegetables so much better isn’t there?  I had them on my cereal for  breakfast with some plain yoghurt this morning and they were delicious. I also made a batch of muffins with some of them. Tonight they may find their way into a fresh fruit salad with a dollop of vanilla ice-cream!

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 4 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup caster sugar or 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 100 grams butter
• 1 cup milk
• 1 egg
• 1-1 1/2 cups blueberries – use frozen if you don’t have fresh

Put the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl.

In another bowl warm the butter until melted, then add the milk and egg (and unsweetened applesauce if using)- beat to mix well.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix together without over doing it!

Fold the fresh berries into the mix gently so the berries hold their shape.

Scoop 1/4 cup of the mixture and spoon into your muffin pan that is neither paper lined or well coated with a cooking non-stick spray. Sprinkle each muffin with
Cinnamon Sugar – just a little 🙂

Bake in a hot oven – 220°c for 12-15 minutes. (The muffins will spring back when pressed).

*if you used frozen berries the bake will take about 5 minutes longer

Makes 12 muffins

Cinnamon Sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar, and white sugar, and 1 tablespoon of cinnamon. Shake together in a screw-topped jar – sprinkle over your muffins before baking.

I have to tell you a funny story about the first time I made Blueberry Muffins for my husband – I had packed a couple of freshly baked muffins in a lunch box for him as he headed off to the office.

Sometime later that day I received a text message from him that left me puzzled. It read ‘husband poisoned by new wife – mouldy muffins for lunch!’ – I wondered what he was talking about?

It wasn’t until we were home in the evening that I questioned his message – he had split open a Blueberry muffin and it looked mouldy to him so he did not eat it. Silly man I said ‘the Blueberries had ‘oozed’ juice and the muffin mix was slightly bluey-green!!

We have laughed about this more than once – and I smiled about that occasion as I was folding the Blueberries into the muffin mix today!

Happy ‘mouldy’ baking xx