classic blueberry muffins

I have my good days and my lazy days and being lazy is something I do enjoy and making this batch of blueberry muffins was definitely one of those lazy days. Not a whole lot of thought went into picking this recipe, it jumped out at me as I was flicking through for recipes to make and it was just easy because I had all the ingredients at home. And hooray, due to slighly cheaper fresh blueberries being available, this was by default 'the recipe' to make!

This recipe comes out of GoodFood 101 - Cupcakes & Small Bakes by BBC Books. I more or less bagged this one the minute I saw it on the shelf at the shops!

Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Line a 12 hole muffin tin with paper cases. In a large bowl, combine 140g caster sugar, 250g sifted self-raising flour and 1 tsp bicarbonate soda.

In a jug, mix together 85g melted and cooled unsalted butter, 2 large beaten eggs, 200mL milk and 1 tsp vanilla extract. Pour in the flour mix and stir to combine; be careful not to overmix otherwise the muffins will come out of the oven tough.

Fold in 150g punnet blueberries. This isn't a rule persay but I generally find if you are looking at the batter and feeling like you want to eat it whilst it's uncooked, you are going to make a good tasting muffin and this recipe was definitely one of those.

Spoon the mixture into the cases and bake for 15-18 minutes until golden and firm.

Remove from tin.

Cool on a wire rack.

My muffins actually came out of the oven a lot lighter in colour than the ones in the book but were cooked all the way through so I guess the lesson is, don't always trust the pictures in a cookbook; trust your own instincts and if in doubt, checking with a skewer is always the way to go. I've baked muffins so many times now but still always check with the skewer and so far, have a pretty good track record!