The muffin recipe...

For those of you who asked here is the muffin recipe I use.
They are very ordinary muffins!

50g butter, softened
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
3/4 cup wholemeal flour
3/4 cup plain baking flour
2 teaspoons mixed spice
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)
3/4 cup milk

Topping
Mix together:
50g melted butter
1/2 cup of oats
1/3 cup brown sugar


Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl. Beat in egg. Sift wholemeal flour, flour, mixed spice, baking powder and salt together. Return husks from sifter to bowl. Dissolve the soda in the milk. Add sifted ingredients alternately with soda to the creamed mixture, mixing just to combine. Spoon mixture into greased patty tins. Cover each muffin with the topping then bake at 200 degrees Celcius for 12-15 minutes.

The topping is my own addition. I love it because it makes the tops super crunchy and sweet. If any of the topping gets burnt don't eat it, it tastes awful!

And for those of you who asked just how cold it gets here, well...we had our coldest daytime temperature ever recorded, it was 8.2 degrees celcius (it gets colder at night). And we had snow for the first time since 1939, although some of the experts say it was 'graupel' or soft hail.
Now I know some of you will be laughing at the 8.2 degrees being 'cold' but here in Auckland we don't have central heating in our houses, during the day you only heat the room you're in and at night you don't heat anything! As our house is over 80 years old if it's 8.2 degrees outside it means it's just as cold inside the house! You can usually see your breath when you wake up in the morning, makes it very difficult to get out of a cosy bed. And poor Noah has to wear shorts to school all year round, whatever the weather. Happily the weather has warmed up considerably in the last week.

Enjoy the muffins!

Mercedes