buttermilk berry muffins

One thing I've discovered is that you can make an awful load of recipes when you buy 1 litre of buttermilk. I used buttermilk for both batches of Fortnum's scones and in an attempt to use up the rest of the buttermilk, it only made sense to find a recipe that called for buttermilk as it's main ingredient. My friend Mashi was perfect in pointing me in the right direction. She actually suggested both a savoury and sweet recipe and well, it wasn't a tough choice; my choice would always be sweet. This recipe is from Joy of Baking.com; if you haven't come across this site, let me just say that it's an absolute treasure chest of recipes for keen bakers.

Preheat oven to 190 degrees. Line a 12 hole muffin tray. In a jug, whisk together 1 egg, 180mL buttermilk, 160mL canola oil and 1 tsp vanilla extract. In a large bowl, combine 325g plain flour, 150g caster sugar, 2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp baking powder, a pinch of salt and zest of one orange. With a spatula, fold the wet ingredients into the dry mix until just combined. Stir in 2 cups frozen berries. Fill each muffin cup almost full with batter. 

Bake in the oven for 20 minutes. 

Transfer to a wire rack and let to cool. Makes 12 regular sized muffins. 

When I was mixing this batch, I actually worried about how the muffins would turn out as even with a slight combining of the ingredients, the batter was quite firm and dough-like. I needn't have worried because the muffins came out of the muffin absolutely fine - bursting with berries (I probably used a bit more than two cups as I was trying to finish the bag of frozen berries we had) and the texture was perfectly moist and very tasty. 

If you go to the original recipe, it actually tells you how you can make buttermilk from regular milk. I think I'll try that one day just to see how it goes - it would save me having to find more recipes which use buttermilk; I think I might've exhausted them already!