Every now and then a recipe comes along and you say to yourself: “This is it. I’ve found it.”

And that’s what these muffins are! I’ve made many a muffin in my time and there’s a difficult balance to find between taste, health, moistness, and flavour. Some muffins are just too healthy. Some are a cupcake by another name. To me, a good muffin is one that sits pleasantly in the middle of the scale, with great flavour to boot.

The next time you have blueberries in your fridge/freezer just begging to be baked into something, pull up this recipe and enjoy.

Blueberry Banana Oat Muffins

Makes: 12-18 muffins
Cooking time: 20 min hands on

Ingredients:

• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1/2 cup each plain flour and whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup almond meal (or wheat germ)
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1.5 cups mashed bananas (about 2 large)
• 1/2 cup butter, softened (use vegan butter if desired)
• 1 egg or your favourite egg replacer
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup blueberries, fresh or frozen (many other berries would work great in this too, do not defrost berries before using)

Preheat oven to 375 F / 190 C. Line a muffin tin with paper liners or grease it well.

Combine all dry ingredients (including sugar) in one large bowl and toss until combined. In separate bowl, soften butter and mix well with mashed bananas (they can still be a little bit chunky), egg, and vanilla extract. Pour over dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Add berries and stir again just until they are dispersed through the batter.

Divide among muffin cups — these don’t rise a huge amount so you could do 12 muffins, but I opted to be on the safe side and reserved enough batter to make six more. Up to you! Bake for 20 minutes or until slightly golden on top. Cool on wire racks.

Enjoy! These keep well for several days in a sealed container, freeze if you want them to last longer (although you’ll probably want to eat them straight away!).