Blueberry muffins

Nigella and I have fallen out.

You wouldn’t think so from the picture above. You’d think “Mmm! Home-made blueberry muffins! Made by following a Nigella Lawson recipe to the letter.” Unfortunately then you’d want to eat them. And you’d take a bite and think “BLUUUURGH! What have I just put in my mouth? Sweet mother of Christ what is this?! How long until I can get rid of the taste of salt?”
And the answer is about 10 minutes.

As Waitrose had an offer on blueberries I got two punnets when I was buying ingredients for my cheesecake. So to use these up I thought I’d give muffins a whiz. I found a recipe on www.nigella.com and as they’re described as ‘the best blueberry muffins’ I got cooking.

And they probably would have been the best blueberry muffins had I not read ‘3 / 4 tsp salt’ as three to four teaspoons of salt. To be fair I only used two but if you want to say three quarters say ¾. God. Some people…


Here is the recipe for a competent person:

300g of blueberries though I used around 400 to finish them off
280g of self raising flower
67g of sugar
2 teaspoons of baking powder
THREE QUARTERS OF A TEASPOON of salt
2 eggs
4 tablespoons of butter, melted
175ml milk

Wash the blueberries in a sieve and place them on a floured tea towel. To coat them slightly bundle them up and give them a gentle shake around. Leave these to dry for about half an hour though I found mine fine by the time I had finished my batter.

Preheat the oven to 170°c/gas mark 7 and sieve the flour, sugar, baking soda and THREE QUARTERS OF A TEASPOON of salt in to a bowl. Once you pour the wet stuff in you only want to stir it ten to fifteen times or the muffins will be very tough so rather than having layers of flour etc mix it around now.

Beat the eggs in another bowl adding in first the butter and then the milk. Make a well in your dry ingredients and quickly stir everything in as much as you can with those few precious strokes. Don’t worry too much about lumps and throw in the blueberries, folding them in once or twice.

Dollop about a spoon and a half of the batter in to muffin cases, filling them up about two thirds of the way. Put them in the oven for about 15 to 20 minutes until they’re golden brown on top. Put them on a rack to cool and unlike mine eat them when they’re room temperature.