Recipe: Fruity Breakfast Muffins

A while back, I posted a recipe for oaty pancakes. I love making them, and they're easy to make in a batch and freeze, so we had them every day for about four hundred years. And then S got sick of them, and I had a problem on my hands: what else could we have for breakfast that would be relatively healthy, easy to make, quick to eat and minimally messy...

Step up, breakfast muffins! I got this recipe from... I don't know, some website or other. But I've adapted it a bit because I don't like to follow instructions.

Ingredients

125g plain flour

75g wholemeal flour

200g porridge oats

75g brown sugar

3tsp baking powder

1tsp cinnamon

1tsp salt - original recipe has this; I don't use it because I don't like to add salt to food

2 bananas, mashed - you can substitute one banana for a pear or other squishy fruit, if you have it hanging about the kitchen to use up. It needs to be squishy fruit though.

2 large eggs, separated

3tbsp sunflower oil

250ml milk

125g blueberries  - great in Summer, expensive and impractical in Winter. I tend to just use some other dried fruit instead. I like to soak the fruit in juice over night, so that it is nice and plump

50g dried fruit of choice

Method

In a large bowl, mix the flours, oats, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon and salt if you're using it. I also add some nutmeg at this stage, and maybe some mixed spice. Because I'm feeling Christmassy.

Make a well in the centre and add your wet ingredients (except egg whites): bananas, egg yolks, oil, milk. Gently mix together until it's just about combined - don't over mix it or bad things will happen.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites into soft peaks then gently fold them into the cake mixture and add your dried fruit.

This is how my mix looks, before it goes in the cake cases.

Now, the recipe says you put the mixture into 12 cake cases - but in my experience it makes closer to 18, even using large cases. So allow for that when you're preparing your baking trays.

Bake for 25 minutes at 200 C.

They keep for a couple of days, and then get gradually more stale, and the last lot I made were mouldy within about 5 days. So it's probably a good idea to either feed them to friends and family, or freeze them (and remember to defrost one or two the night before!).

The last batch I made had glace cherries, raisins soaked in orange juice and currants in them

They seemed to go down well.