tea time at my french country home

Few things speak better to me of a caring family life than the smell of home baked goodies at tea time.    This weekend,  the snow was falling hard, and my youngest invited friends here for sledging, snowballing and general fun.

I quickly make up batches of muffins, served with hot chocolate or glasses of milk.  The most difficult part of the exercise was getting these pictures taken!  Once the boys knew that the goods were ready the whole lot disappeared in a flash.

And that's a good thing, because we all know who finishes up the left overs - yup, yours truly, and believe me I really don't need any extra calories right now.

By the kitchen clock, these muffins took less than half an hour, from getting the ingredients out of the cupboards to being laid out on the table.  Some stuff is just too easy and too quick not to do!

Every family has their favourite muffin and brownie recipes, but I thought you may like to try mine.

Each recipe is for about a dozen muffins, and the oven was preheated to 180°, on fan heat so I could cook both trays together.

For the chocolate muffins, I actually use  a brownie recipe:

first I melt together in the micro wave or in a pan

5 oz dark chocolate

5 oz butter

10 oz sugar

Add to the above, 

4 well-beaten eggs, 

5 oz flour

a gloop of vanilla essence and a pinch of salt

Simply pour into the muffin pans and cook for less than 10 minutes, if you overcook they'll be dry, and you certainly don't want that!  If you want to make them a little more special then you can push a square of chocolate into the middle of the muffin as you put them into the oven.

To make the apple and raisin muffins,  

heat in a pan or in the microwave

150 grams of butter

2 cups milk

2 cups sugar

Add to the above

3 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

good pinch of salt

a good handful of raisins

two small apples, peeled and diced

a teaspoon of allspice

Both batches of mufins are baked in about 10 minutes.  I got the chocolate ones out first and released them from their moulds, while the apple and raisin batch finished turning golden brown.

Hope you're enjoying some seasonal baking too

Thank you for reading me!