Muffins are a great snack and go well with coffee or tea. I am not a fan of shop bought muffins as I find them dry and not particularly tasty. What I prefer to do is make a cake and instead of cooking one large cake I like to make cup cakes or muffins.

To do this effectively, you need to have a muffin tin or tins that will take all of the cake mix that you are going to make. Sometimes if you leave the mixture for too long the baking powder reacts away and then second lot may not rise enough.

Remember it is no fun cleaning a dirty muffin tin so make sure that you line them with patty cases or with glad bake... The best patty tin cases are of course the tin ones. If they are unavailable get the thickest paper ones that you can. If in doubt use 2.

Don't over fill the patty cake case... they will rise in the oven and you must plan for this.

Basic butter cake/plain muffin recipe

250g Butter (Lurpak is the best)

125g of sugar caster sugar is best

4 eggs (room temperature)

250 g of self raising flour ( or 250g of plain flour 1.5 teaspoons of baking powder)

1/4 cup of milk

Method:

1. Cream the butter and sugar together

2. Add eggs one at a time

3. Add half the flour

4. Then add the milk

5. If the batter is too stiff then add some more milk.

6. Add the flavours that you like

Ideas for flavours:

Fruit- try raspberries, blueberries (if using canned ones drain the juice), strawberries, grated apples, ( half a cup of fruit)

coffee and pecan- use 1 teaspoon of instant coffee and dissolve in 1 tablespoon of hot water add when you add the milk

Choc chip: Add half a cup of chocolate chips - milk, dark or white.