I like making muffins. They are quick, easy and lend themselves to a multitude of flavour combinations. This recipe is slightly different to the one I usually cook with. I was introduced to it by someone I used to work with. We worked together one day a week, and the whole day would be spent talking about food, restaurants, markets and cooking. Oh and we did some work as well!
I always find it fantastic to talk to like minded people who enjoy food. Many of my friends aren’t as passionate about food as I am, and I sometimes start to feel a bit of a weirdo when I get excited about food stuff. So, it’s nice to have these other people around me who are just as passionate and interested in food as I am. That is one thing I do miss about not working at the moment. While there were frustrations with working, some of the people I had the pleasure of working with were passionate foodies and I learnt a lot from them. Often when I worked with another colleague I would be met with lists of foodie go-to places I had never heard of, or food related newspaper articles about something we had recently discussed.
Another dear work friend and I could always be found in quiet moments searching through the cookbooks for sale, and talking about what we could make for dinner. My friend’s dinners always sounded so gourmet, it put my dinner of boring pasta or a vegemite bagel to deeper shame than they already were.
When new cookbooks arrived, my friend could always be heard calling to me, ‘hey Kath luv, you could make this!’ or ‘There is a cookbook out there I know you would like!’. Which usually meant the rest of us from the coffee shop scrambling to take a look at the new delivery and laughingly fight over who would buy the books (sorry customers!).
One time another friend & colleague of mine and I ran to each other each holding Bill Granger’s book ‘Easy’. We both were holding on to our copies for dear life, thinking the other would want to buy it too. We laughed when we each saw the other clutching our books saying ‘This is mine!’ Thank God someone ordered two copies of that one!
This recipe yields about 10 (smallish) muffins. If you double the recipe you will get a good 20 or so (smallish) muffins or 12 seriously massive ones (similar to the size of from a texan muffin tin).
Ingredients:
220 g flour
2 tsp baking powder
125 g sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
3/4 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup milk
200 g raspberries, roughly chopped
2 tbsp rosewater
Method:
Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Line a twelve hole muffin tin with cases (minus 2).
In a large bowl add the flour, baking powder and salt. In a separate bowl whisk together the vegetable oil, egg and milk.
Add the raspberries to the flour mixture and gently mix. Add the oil mixture and the rosewater and gently mix until just combined.
Fill muffin cases about 3/4 full, then bake for about 30 minutes. The muffins will be cooked when they are golden on top and spring back when touched.
Recipe Adapted from ‘The Cook’s Companion’ by Stephanie Alexander, p.123 (1996).
All baking, styling & photography for this post by Kathryn Vincent of Kulinary Adventures of Kath.