So! I am back online everyone! A further call to IT this morning has seen me sorted out, finally, after a rather frustrating week. I’ve been dashing to the library and my office in between all the other things I’ve been doing when I’ve needed to open attachments to emails. There’s nothing quite like trying to understand an excel document on a Blackberry.

I figured I’d start out with the post I had planned for Sunday. Sometimes over the weekend I like to spend a little more time making breakfast. Usually it’s coffee and oats for me but some Sundays I get up and want bacon and eggs or, as was the case this Sunday, a lovely straight-from-the-oven carbohydrate. These are from a Marie Claire cookbook called Cuisine which I found in a bookstore last week. It’s basically a collection of all the best recipes of the Marie Claire series. I got rather excited about it because I happen to love the Marie Claire books (I have a rather ridiculous number of them and they were amongst the first recipe books I started to buy) but mine are all in Joburg. Their recipes tend to be easy and quick and are great inspiration when you’re stuck for dinner. They also generally have wicked breakfast recipes.

These particular muffins are made with oil so it doesn’t matter if you don’t have butter at room temperature (the curse of trying to do something quickly I find) and you only need two bowls. Okay, maybe three. The original recipe called for blueberries but I had a punnet of blackberries that needed using so I changed that. I also used more wholewheat flour as I’d run out of plain flour. You can either do all plain or half and half as I’ve written here.  As usual I used golden caster sugar.

Apple and Blackberry Muffins
Adapted from Marie Claire Cuisine
2 eggs
2 tbsp honey
1 tbsp golden caster sugar
3 tbsp sunflower oil
1 green apple, 1/2 grated, 1/2 sliced
3/4 cup milk
150g blackberries
125g plain flour
125g wholemeal flour
1 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp baking powder

Preheat the oven to 180C and line a muffin tray with cases.
In a bowl whisk together the eggs, honey, sugar and oil until combined. Add in the grated apple and milk.

 In a separate bowl, crush the blackberries lightly with the back of a fork, just so they’re slightly broken up and not in large pieces.

 Add the blackberries to the egg mixture and give everything a good stir.

 In a separate bowl, mix together the dry ingredients. Fold half the dry mixture into the egg mixture and combine. Then fold in the rest of the dry ingredients.

Spoon into muffin cases. Top with apple slices and a sprinkle of golden caster sugar.

Bake for 30 minutes, until the tops are golden and a skewer comes out clean. Allow to cool slightly in the tin before turning out onto a wire rack. The original recipe says it makes 6 but mine made 12 so I did half without apple on top. These muffins don’t really keep as the apple baked on top goes soggy so you need to eat them the day they’re baked, preferably whilst they’re still warm.