Passion fruit curd marbled frangipane muffins

These are delicious muffins. They're based on Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's recipe from River Cottage Everyday (which I highly recommend - full of good stuff).

They don't rise quite like an ordinary muffin due to the ground almonds but are sweet and delicious and perfect for Sunday breakfast (which is always pancakes or muffins) or for a post-run treat.

Recipe makes 12 big muffins.

Line a muffin tin with cases and put the oven on to Gas mark 4/180 degrees C.

In a large bowl mix 100g ground almonds, 125g plain flour, 2 tsp baking powder and 100g caster sugar. Whisk with a fork to combine well and add air.

In a glass jug measure out 125ml plain yoghurt, top up to the 250ml mark with whole milk, beat in an egg and add 75g of melted and slightly cooled butter.

Quickly combine the wet and dry ingredients and put a spoonful into each case, only half filling them.

Next add a spoonful of passion fruit curd to each muffin case (if you've got a big sister who has given you a lovely pot of home made passion fruit curd for Christmas. If not use lemon curd or chocolate hazelnut spread). Top up each case with the rest of the mixture. Then use a skewer to quickly marble the mixture.

Pop in the oven for half an hour until golden brown. Eat while still warm.

Notes: If you haven't got enough (or any) ground almonds, use plain flour instead, and if you adore a really marzipanny flavour add a few drops of almond extract.

Chocolate courgette cake and lime courgette muffins

This is a my take on a recipe from BBC Good Food's website for chocolate courgette cake. I had a look at their recipe and decided to add a few tweaks here and there. For a start I decided wholemeal flour would be a better bet. I often use wholemeal flour in recipes which use fruit or veg as I find it mops up the extra moisture better than ordinary plain flour. If you don't like the bran bits, sieve them out. I also reduced the sugar a little, changed the oil and left out the nuts. It takes about ten minutes to mix up and about an hour to bake.

Ingredients:

• 350g plain wholemeal flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• half a tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 50g Green and Blacks cocoa powder (you can use other brands, but this is the best for this cake)
• 175ml sunflower oil
• 350g golden caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 500ml (by volume, measured in a jug) grated courgettes

Method

• Combine the flour, baking powder, bicarb and cocoa powder in a bowl and whisk with a fork.
• Beat the oil, sugar, eggs and vanilla together and add the courgettes.
• Mix the wet into the dry and pour into a greased and base-lined 24cm cake tin.
• Bake at Gas mark 4/180 degrees C for 55 to 65 minutes. (Check after the first 45 mins to see how it's doing - your oven might be faster than mine.)

The original recipe tops it with a chocolate ganache which would be lovely but it's nice just sliced and served with a cup of coffee.

Lime Courgette Muffins

These are based on Flora's Famous Courgette Cake from Nigella's How to Be a Domestic Goddess. As usual I can't bear to follow a recipe to the letter and sometimes muffins are more convenient than a cake. I made these to hand around at a picnic at St Anne's Lighthouse this summer.

Ingredients

• 60g sultanas
• 250g grated courgettes, drained in a sieve
• 2 large eggs
• 125ml sunflower oil
• 150g golden caster sugar
• 225g self-raising flour
• half a tsp bicarbonate of soda
• half a tsp baking powder

Method

• Mix the eggs, oil and sugar in a bowl and beat until creamy.
• Sieve in the flour, bicarb and baking powder and beat again.
• Add the courgettes and the sultanas.
• Spoon into muffin cases in a muffin tin and bake at gas mark 4/180 degrees C for 15 to 20 minutes.

Icing

• Mix icing sugar and lime juice (I use the ready squeezed stuff from a bottle that I always have in the fridge) to a thick paste.
• As soon as the muffins are done spoon on dollops of icing while they are still hot from the oven.
• If you have an actual lime to hand, grate over a little of the peel onto the tops of the muffins.

Muffins for breakfast

I read somewhere, which was probably Nigella, that Italians eat cakes and puddings for breakfast. That seems an excellent idea to me and you'll often find us eating up the leftover Sunday pud - apple crumble and custard or sticky toffee pudding and ice cream - for breakfast on a Monday morning. It gets the week off to a great start and it feels slightly naughty (especially the ice cream bit!)

Why not though? It can't be worse than some of the sugary breakfast cereals currently on sale. I often make muffins too. They're quick and easy to make and I usually make them to use up whatever fruit is about to go rotten in the fruit bowl before we can eat it. This is usually bananas, but can be strawberries or nectarines. I usually use wholemeal flour too as it feels more wholesome and breakfasty.

Today it was two bananas. They had passed the just-spotty-and-totally-delicious phase and were well on the way to falling-out-of-the-skin-in-a-very-bananary-way phase.

So I made muffins, but not without my orders. R6 doesn't like the brown bits that really ripe bananas leave in muffins but doesn't mind the flavour so subterfuge is the order of the day. "Make them really choclatey," I was told, so I did.

Bananachocanilla Muffins

MAKES: 12 big muffins.

INGREDIENTS:

(I always make muffins in ounces for some reason...)

7oz plain wholemeal flour
1 oz cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
4oz dark soft brown sugar
4oz melted butter
1 large egg
4 fl oz milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
two very ripe bananas
chopped plain chocolate - about a couple of ounces, whatever is to hand.

METHOD:

1. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl, break up any lumps and whisk with a fork to get some air into the mix.
2. Mix the wet ingredients together.
3. Mush the bananas and add them with the wet ingredients and the choc chips into the dry ingredients.
4. Stir briefly until just about mixed. Too much mixing makes them tough.
5. Spoon into muffin cases and bake at Gas mark 5 (190 degrees C) for 10 to 15 minutes until springy on top. Eat for breakfast with a glass of milk.

If you're feeling really self-indulgent you could spread a bit of Nutella on these as you eat them but that would be VERY naughty indeed, and don't even think about putting ice cream on these too as the Diet Police will be hammering on your door...

Wild strawberry and orange muffins

We had these for breakfast this morning, so I thought I'd share the recipe with you. The garden is full of wild strawberries at the moment - mostly the tiny alpine variety, but also some that are bigger fruited, ripe when pale pink with red pips and with a lovely fragrant taste.

Ingredients:

225g (8oz) plain flour

2 tsp baking power

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

grated rind of 1 orange

100g (4oz) melted butter (or same weight of sunflower oil)

100g (4oz) caster sugar

1 large egg

the juice of the orange topped up to 125ml (4 fl oz) with milk

approx 1 big handful of wild strawberries or chopped ordinary strawberries (or other berries).

Method: 

• Combine all the dry ingredients. Whisk them with a fork to get some air into the mixture.
• Combine all the wet ingredients, then add with the strawberries to the dry ingredients.
• Stir briefly to make a lumpy batter, then spoon into muffin cases and bake at Gas 5 (180 deg C) for 10 to 15 minutes.

Eat while still warm!

Strawberry muffins

So. It's the first day of the summer holidays. Eventually we drag ourselves from our beds.

"What would you like for breakfast darlings?" I trill at my two sweet urchins, pulling on my domestic goddess apron, plimming my bosom and tossing my hair in the style of Nigella.

"A treat," demands R4.

Rightyho. Is this the way summer is to pan out? Am I making a rod for my own back? Will they expect me to cook something from scratch every breakfast time?

Ptooey, as whatshisname says in the film 'Ratatouille'.

Anyway, today 'breakfast' is a loosely applied term, it being already pretty late. Not quite late enough, perhaps, for it to have become 'elevenses', but not quite the normal crack-of-dawnsiness one would really associate with the term.

A treat it is then. I survey the wreckage of my kitchen. I say 'wreckage' because last evening Brian took out two of the cupboards, the work surface and the radiator, then dug a big hole in the floor. No matter. I have a cooker and the top of the dishwasher, so off I go.

Yesterday was Farmers Market day in Haverfordwest, and I have a large punnet of fragrant strawberries from Manorbier. Muffins are breakfasty, so strawberry muffins it is. I turn, of course, to Nigella, at breakfast-times in need of treat, so I begin with her Orange Breakfast muffins recipe from Nigella Bites, and add strawberries.

INGREDIENTS AND METHOD

75g butter

* Switch the oven on to Gas Mark 6 (200 degrees C) and pop the butter into the oven to melt (use an ovenproof bowl! Doh!). Then pop twelve cake cases into your muffin tin.

220g self-raising flour
25g ground almonds
half a teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
one teaspoon baking powder
75g caster sugar

* Combine in a large bowl.
* Rescue the butter!

100ml orange juice
100ml milk
1 large egg

* Mix together in a jug, then add the cooled butter.

Strawberries

* Not an exact science this. Start off with about 16 big juicy strawberries. Fend off small, hungry children. Fail. Chop the eight remaining strawberries into cubes.

* Roughly combine the wet and dry ingredients and the strawberries. Pile into the muffin tins.

* Any mixture that you can't squeeze in can go into the oven in the oven proof bowl you used for the butter. The children won't know about this big, flat muffin cake. Cook's perk!

* Bake for 20 minutes, until golden brown. Serve hot with butter (or, better still, clotted cream).

Makes 12 big fruity muffins (and a spare!).