recipe: Healthy blueberry muffins with cheeky chocolate chips

This morning, my tummy was rumbling like I hadn't eaten in a month. In this student house, I have about three regular breakfast options - porridge and fruit, toast, or nothing (a crime). I was feeling a bit 'meh' of porridge, and white toast seemed too unhealthy, so I decided to bake something instead as I didn't have to go into uni. I'm also going home next weekend, so it was the right time to use up my fresh baking ingredients.

I googled for a regular blueberry muffin recipe and adapted it slightly to make it a bit more breakfast-friendly. Well, first I googled for a banana muffin recipe as I'd been saving some ripe bananas specifically for banana muffins, but it turned out I'd left them for too long and they'd gone mouldy, aaargh! Luckily I had some blueberries in the fridge just waiting to be shoved into a muffin tin.

These muffins are a really healthy alternative to the breakfast routine if you have time to spare. It uses wholemeal flour and lots of oats so it's packed full of energy, and fresh blueberries are a great antioxidant. It uses natural yoghurt instead of milk, so it's got a good source of probiotics, calcium and protein thrown in there. The chocolate chips are optional of course but I feel a little uncomfortable eating things that sound TOO healthy ;)

This recipe uses mostly cup measurements as it's dawned on me lately that my £4 Argos scales that I cheaped out on are actually crazily unreliable and don't really measure anything. So I scavenged and started using a cup I have for a rice cooker.

INGREDIENTS

• 2/3 cup granulated sugar
• Approx 150g butter/4 big spoonfuls of butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup natural yoghurt
• 1 cup oats
• 2 cups wholemeal, self-raising flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 cup blueberries
• as many chocolate chips as you want
• half a teaspoon of cinnamon (optional, but will boost your metabolism which is smashing)

METHOD

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius (fan oven) and line muffin tin (I managed to fill up 16 cases)
2. Beat together the butter and sugar.
3. Add beaten eggs and vanilla essence.
4. Stir in natural yoghurt and add the oats.
5. Gently fold in the flour, cinnamon and baking powder.
6. Fold in the blueberries and chocolate chips.
7. Spoon generously into muffin cases until almost full, so they rise into a nice muffin top.
8. Sprinkle a few oats on top of muffin.
9. Bake for 20-25 minutes until golden and springy.

It's as easy as pie. I ate mine for brunch straight out of the oven with a sweet milky coffee and it was DIVINE. This was about 2 hours ago and I don't feel remotely hungry yet, whereas with something like toast I'd be pining for food within an hour. YUM.