Banana and blueberry muffins

It's national cupcake day! So to mark the occasion I'm making muffins....

Before I could start I had to ask myself what kind of muffins did I actually want to make? Initially I was thinking about a classic blueberry muffin - I mean who doesn't like a fresh batch of blueberry muffins.

We have lots of bananas in the house though so I need to use them......and chocolate chips....ooh the possibilities are endless.

Some differences between cupcakes and muffins are really quite obvious even before you have taken a bite. Muffins are large and mostly undecorated whilst cupcakes tend to be a bit on the smaller side and are often decorated with icing or frosting, sometimes lavishly.

However the main difference between the two sweet treats is that cupcakes follow a cake recipe whereas muffins follow more of a bread type recipe. The creaming method is hardly ever used when making muffins whilst it is most common in cupcakes; this is because the cupcake needs to be light and fluffy and therefore requires a lot of air to be incorporated into the mixture.

Therefore you can tell the difference between a cupcake and a muffin by its texture: cupcakes are light and fluffy whilst muffins have a thicker, denser texture.

Similarly cupcakes tend to contain more sugar (and thats not just because of all that icing. So if asked for a 'healthy bake' steer towards to muffin spectrum.

I have based my recipe roughly on this one by the Hairy Bikers yet true to form the actual recipe used varies quite a bit.

Now when I researched different recipes using banana they all said to mash it: I imagine this is because it gives the mix a more uniform banana flavour. I however decided to ignore this and slice them instead, thus adding an element of surprise when you come across a pocket of banana.

I chopped my walnuts into irregular chunks for the same reason.


For the muffins you will need:

250g self raising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 ripe bananas (sliced)
150g blueberries
100g white chocolate chips
185ml milk
6 tbsp honey or sugar if you prefer
50g butter (melted)
50g walnuts (roughly chopped
1 egg

Preheat the oven to 180C

Line a cupcake tray with paper cases

Add the flour and baking powder into a large bowl making a well in the centre.

Pour in the melted butter, milk, honey and lastly the egg. Stir until incorporated.

Fold in all the additional ingredients being careful not to over stir the fruit as you will bruise the fruit and cause the juices to come pouring out.

Transfer into the cases and bake for 17-20 minutes.