White Chocolate and Blueberry Muffins

Another Sunday, another opportunity to create huge amounts of washing up. This week: White Chocolate and Blueberry Muffins. The mix of blueberries and white chocolate gives the best of both worlds - they are incredibly simple to put together and take only 25 minutes to bake.

The recipe I followed is the same as the one from BBC Good Food, just with 1tsp of baking powder instead of 1/2 and no salt, as I forgot to put it in. Doesn’t seem to have affected the taste at all. It’s important not to mix too much and lumps are OK - I couldn’t tell the difference between lumps and chocolate chunks and probably only mixed it for 30 seconds or so.

Once cooked, leave in the tin for 5 minutes before leaving to cool. This gives them a chance to solidify a bit so they don’t fall apart whilst being removed.

Baking Bread

I have recently been having fun baking bread.

There’s nothing better than a freshly-baked loaf - it’s a million miles away from a white sliced loaf from the supermarket. The recipe is very easy - flour, water, salt, sugar, yeast and a bit of olive oil - it just takes a bit of time to get everything together and do the kneading.

Next, shape the dough, leave for 10 minutes under a greased loaf tin, then shape the loaf properly and put into the tin. Leave to rise for an hour, then put into the oven for around 30 minutes at 200c until brown on top and it sounds hollow when you knock the bottom of the loaf. Afterwards, let the bread cool for a while (if possible, I can’t resist warm bread) and then eat. It’s especially nice with a bit of marmite.

I have a baking stone (used mainly for pizza) which I preheat in the oven while the loaf is rising. The crust at the bottom can be crisped by taking the loaf out the tin 5 minutes before it’s ready and placing finishing on the stone, but it’s not crucial to making a good loaf.