Easy Thrifty Muffins

You may have noticed my mild excitement at making butter from cream last week…
As well as delicious butter (that I am still astounded tastes like actual butter!) that particular experiment yielded about 150ml of buttermilk as well, which has been sat in my fridge patiently waiting for an opportunity to be used.

We were all out of cake, which is a pretty shocking situation to be in, so I decided to whip up a batch of these while tea was cooking. The recipe is adapted from Nigella’s Granola Muffins in her Feast book.
They are thrifty as you can basically use whatever is in the cupboard to add to them-Nigella suggest granola, or muesli, but I add neither of those, so adapted it to suit.

This is what you need:

• 225g plain flour
• 175g light brown soft sugar
• 1tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/4 tsp table salt
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 250ml buttermilk (I only had 150ml, so made up the difference with milk. If you don’t have buttermilk, you can add a squeeze of lemon juice to some milk, for the same effect)
• 1 free range egg
• 80ml vegetable oil
• 100g porridge oats
• 150g raisins/sultanas/dried apricots/whatever is in the cupboard

This is what you do:

• Pre-heat the oven to 180C (fan)
• Line a muffin tin with cases (I have the re-usable silicone ones and love them a lot!)
• Combine all the dry ingredients, except the porridge oats and dried fruit, in a bowl and stir to mix
• In a jug, mix the buttermilk, egg and oil, and whisk with a fork
• Add the liquid ingredients to the bowl of dry ingredients, and mix lightly
• Fold in the porridge oats and dried fruit and give a final stir
• Spoon into muffin cases, and bake in the pre-heated oven for about 25 minutes, until risen and golden brown
• Allow to cool briefly before eating, so that you don’t burn your tongue on the hot raisins….