buttermilk muffins with cheese, herbs and tomaraisins

This recipe is the second recipe inspired by Lynn Bedford Hall’s ‘Fig Jam and Foxtrot’, one of my favourite South African cookbooks.

These are super easy to make and can be whipped up in a few minutes, and the ingredients can easily be substituted or left out.

  I tweaked it slightly and used tomaraisins instead of sun dried tomatoes.

This is what you need to make these:

•  1 cup  (250ml) of whole wheat flour plus 1 tsp of baking powder
• 1 cup (250 ml) of self raising flour (or 2 cups of self raising flour)
• 1 tsp of mustard (or 1/2 tsp mustard powder)
• 1 tsp salt
• 10ml castor sugar
• 2 pickled onions coarsely grated
• 90ml finely cut sun dried tomatoes or tomarasins lightly chopped
• 60gm grated cheddar (I used a mature cheddar)
• 4 Tbs (60ml) chopped parsley
• 1/2 tsp dried mixed herbs
• 1 large free range egg
• 1 cup (250ml) buttermilk
• 1/4 cup (60ml) oil
• 50gm extra grated cheese to sprinkle over the top

How to make:

• Pre heat the oven to 200 C
• sift all the dry ingredients, adding back any whole wheat bits left behind in the sieve
• add the mustard, tomatoes, herbs, cheese and onions to the dry ingredients and mix
• whist the egg, buttermilk and oil and then ad this to the mix
• quickly mix until just combined (do not over mix)
• scoop the batter into an oiled muffin tray (I use a small ice cream scoop) to do this – you will get about 10 muffins
• sprinkle over the cheese and paprika and bake straight away for 25 minutes

These were best served warm and will be the perfect accompaniment to a nice bowl of soup in winter.  Re heat in the microwave for a few seconds if they have cooled down.

As I am not the biggest fan of sun dried tomatoes / tomaraisins, I found these to be a bit too tomatoe-ey and will leave these out next time,  and perhaps add  more cheese and onion.