My laptop was out of action for ages, but I have it back now, so can blog. Yay

I made a batch of Rachel Allen's 30 day muffin mixture. I am a big fan of her recipe books, especially the older ones. This is from 'Bake'. The idea is you use some of the batter for the first batch (blueberry in my case) and the spare batter keeps in the fridge for 30 days. I'm not sure if I'd use it 30 days later, but I did the second batch today (Banana & Maple Syrup) and I still have more batter left. So I may well but her 30 days to the test!

• 3 eggs
• 125 g soft dark brown sugar
• 100 g caster sugar
• 500 ml milk
• 125 ml sunflower oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 300 g plain flour
• 160 g wholemeal flour
• 25 g bran (I guess you could skip this bit but I had some so added it)
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 2 round teaspoons bicarbonate of soda

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180° (or 160° fan). Place muffin cases in muffin tray
2. Whisk the eggs & sugar in a large bowl
3. Add the milk, vanilla and sunflower oil and stir well.
4. Sieve the plain flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda. Then add the wholemeal flour and bran. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and stir (don't mix too much). This is your basic batter which you can make a variety of muffins from.
5. Add additional flavours (see below) and fill muffin cases 3/4 full and bake in oven for 15-20 minutes.
6. Cool on a wire tray.
7. Store unused batter in the fridge until required.

Variations:

Blueberry: Use 400ml of the basic batter and add 75g of fresh blueberries. Makes 10

Banana & Maple Syrup: Use 400ml of the basic batter. Add 150g of mashed banana and 75g of maple syrup. Recipe says it makes 8 but I made had enough batter for 10. Use very ripe bananas if you have them - they are sweeter.

Some @thecakemum observations/tips:

• A lot of muffin recipes tell you not to mix the batter much. I had to give this a good stir as I had pockets of flour and I didn't want to find a lump of flour in a muffin
• The wholemeal flour and bran make the muffins feel kinda healthy and less like a muffin you would find in a coffee shop. If you wanted to, I'm sure you could omit the bran and just use all white flour and still have a lovely muffin.
• I don't have a muffin tray or muffin cases. I used aldi cupcake cases are they are a good size and my cupcake tray.
• We love the banana and maple syrup one. It was delicious.
• You could make endless variations to the batter. I think I might just use good ole chocolate chips on my remaining batter but Rachel suggests, cherries, rhubarb or apple.