Monday 9 May 2011

Recipe for Low fat Rhubarb Crumble Muffins

These are scrummy so, as promised, I have written up the recipe.....  Sadly I have no photographs because they were eaten too quickly!
Ingredients

Muffin
175g caster sugar
175g  rhubarb halved lengthways then diced
2 tbsp sunflower oil
1 egg (free range ofcourse!)
1 tsp vanilla extract
125ml buttermilk or normal milk with a little lemon juice.
200g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Crumble
50g light muscovado sugar
50g plain flour
25g porridge oats
1 tsp ground cinnamon
50g butter

How to make them
Heat up your oven to 220C/200C fan/gas 7.
Line a 12-hole muffin tin with paper muffin cases.
Stir the sugar and rhubarb together and then leave it while you make up the crumble topping mix.
Mix together the muscovado sugar with the flour, oats and cinnamon, then rub in the butter with your fingertips until it sticks together in small lumps.
Stir the oil and egg, vanilla and buttermilk into the sugary rhubarb – it might be a bit juicy but that doesn’t matter.
Add the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda and stir well.
Quickly spoon into the cases, then put a thick layer of the crumble mixture on each muffin.
Bake them for 15-18 mins until golden.  You can check they are cooked by sticking a small skewer into them and making sure there is no mixture on it when you pull it back out again.
Cool on a wire rack.

You can freeze these too which is handy!

Thursday 28 April 2011

I'm no good at art.....

If I had a pound for every time I was told that.... 
We are all creative, every single one of us.  That doesn't mean we are all going to get our pictures exhibited at the National Gallery but that's not what it's about.


"The deepest secret is that life is not a process of discovery but a process of creation.  you are not discovering yourself but creating yourself over.  Seek, therefore, not to find out who you are, seek to determin who you want to be." Neale Donald Walsh. 


Creativity is a natural method of releasing emotion, digesting circumstances and making sense of the world around you.  As children we do it instinctively...... until someone says its not good enough or it doesn't look right.


The process of being creative is paramount, not the end result.  We shouldn't feel we have to make things acceptable for someone else's eyes....  Once we release ourselves from the shackles of what everyone else thinks that's when the real creativity begins!


So just go for it - don't worry - just enjoy!