Muffins are a great recipe for children to help you with or
even, if they are old enough, to complete on their own – at least up to the
stage where they need to go in the oven.
If you start with a basic muffin recipe like this one from
the
Stay
at home mum website you can make them any flavour you and your child likes.
And if you omit the sugar you can make savoury ones too.
Our current favourites in the three foot cooks household are
Raspberry and white chocolate and Banana.
There are a lot of flavour combinations that can be used with this basic
recipe. I have listed some at the end of
this post but feel free to experiment and find one that works for your little
cook.
So today I thought we would try
something different – for our family anyway.
Apple, Banana and
Cinnamon Muffins
Basic Muffin Recipe
2 cups Self Raising Flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg, beaten
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup milk
To make apple, banana and cinnamon muffins, add 1 ripe banana,
mashed, ½ cup apple, grated or pureed and ½ tsp cinnamon.
Here’s how we made them:
Preheat the oven to 175oC. Prepare a 12 hole muffin tray by greasing tray or lining with paper cases.
Mix the flour and sugar together in a large bowl.
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| Bee measuring the flour into the bowl. |
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| Measuring dry ingredients is a good skill for children to practise |
Lightly beat the egg and then add to flour mix along with oil and milk.
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| Bee mixing in the egg, oil and milk |
Gently mix in your chosen flavourings - in our case the pureed apple, mashed banana and cinnamon.
Spoon the mix into the muffin tray. As you can see from the photos we experimented with a spoon and a 1/4 cup measure for filling the tray with mix. Even though the 1/4 cup measure was messy it got the job done quickly. The spoon takes longer and needs to be refilled a lot more often.
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| Trying out the spoon to fill the muffin tray |
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| The 1/4 cup measure is messy but quicker |
The number of muffins this makes will depend on what flavourings and how much of them you add. This variation made 14 standard size muffins. Plain vanilla mix will make 12 muffins.
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| Apple, banana and cinnamon muffins |
Bee loved these muffins so much that she had 2 for dessert. They are also delicious served warm with vanilla ice cream and maple syrup.
Flavour ideas:
Blueberry – add ½ cup fresh or frozen blueberries
Choc Chip – add ½ cup milk or dark chocolate chips
Chocolate – ¼ cup cocoa, mix into the flour before adding
Vanilla – 1tsp vanilla extract
Jam filled – 1tsp vanilla extract added to basic mix, fill
muffin cases, add 1 tsp strawberry jam and push down slightly into mix with end
of spoon
Muesli – 2 tbs honey and 1 cup toasted muesli (you may need
to add a little extra milk or orange juice so the mix is not too dry)
Pizza – ham, grated cheese and chopped pineapple
Tomato and corn – 1 cup frozen corn kernels, ½ cup tomato
salsa, 1/3 cup grated cheese
Pumpkin – Leave out the milk and add 300g pumpkin, cooked,
mashed and cooled, 1 cup grated cheese
What is your child’s favourite afternoon snack?
