Muffins are a great choice for children or novice bakers, or any time you want some sweet and satisfying quickly. They take very little time and effort to put together and only take a short amount of time to cook.

I’ve been thinking for a while that it would be useful to have a basic muffin recipe that I could simply tweak, depending on what I wanted and had available in the pantry. It’s been on my to-do list for some time and for once my procrastination has paid off. I came across this recipe in the Taste supplement in the newspaper that suits this purpose perfectly. I didn’t even have to do a Google search!

This recipe comes from Enzo Titaro of Jenny’s Gourmet Baker as published on Taste

220g (7oz) self-raising flour
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg

Mix the wet into the dry ingredients, taking care to not over mix. Divide the batter between about 12 large muffin cases. Bake at 180C (350F) for about 20 minutes.

The muffins pictured are chocolate, banana and chocolate chip. I made the following adjustments to the master recipe:

replaced about 50g (just under 2oz) of flour with cocoa
added 1/2 cup chocolate chips, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, 1 large and seriously over ripe banana (thoroughly mashed).

Even though the banana was very over ripe the banana flavour surprisingly wasn’t very dominant however it did give the muffins a lovely moist lusciousness. In a way this was a little disappointing. I added the banana because I don’t care for banana flavoured cakes and I thought this was a clever ploy to ensure that these muffins would be left for my children. Well, it hasn’t worked out that way; I’ve eaten three today!

There’s plenty of other great flavour combinations to try; here are just a few suggestions:
Apple, sultana and cinnamon
Orange and craisin
Coconut, macadamia and chocolate chip
Blueberry and buttermilk

What are your favourite muffin flavours?