Can you tell school has started back again? Muffins… I have a bit of an ongoing love affair with muffins. I must have made literally thousands of muffins over the years. This will not be the last muffin recipe you see here, I have so many variations that I want to share with you. Sweet or savoury they are so versatile.

Muffins are great to tuck in your bag for a snack for work, perfect for lunch boxes for children and great whipped up for a morning tea for your workmates. I’ve never had a child object to the vegetables in here either I might add. They are too busy eating these tasty little cheesy bites.

To pump up the cheese flavour you can add additional parmigiana cheese to the cheddar, or for a more grown up version use some interesting cheeses and a dash of chilli or Paprika to the mix. If you want to reduce the fat, use a low fat cheese or reduce the cheddar and add more parmigiana.

One of the wonderful thing about muffins is that they’re really very flexible, you can toss in your favourite ingredients and create your own flavour combinations easily. This muffin has the addition of cornmeal which gives it a slightly interesting texture and taste. I often add a little grated carrot, pumpkin or Kumara (sweet potato) or finely chopped red pepper to these.

There are no school cafeterias here at primary school level and only a small shop at high schools normally, so the majority of children will take a packed lunch to school.

There is a growing trend in New Zealand to remove all unhealthy foods from schools and that includes in packed lunches. No juice boxes, no potato chips, no sweets and no high sugar foods. Personally, I am all for this and think it’s a wonderful move to help our kids develop healthy eating habits right from the start. That’s not to say my children don’t have sweet treats - they do, but in moderation.

Cheddar & Zucchini Muffins

Makes 18 standard muffins

• 2 cups plain flour
• 2/3 cup of fine yellow cornmeal
• 1 tspn baking soda
• 4 tspns baking powder
• 3/4 tspn salt
• 3 tspns sugar
• 2 spring onions including green tops, chopped
• 4 oz of sharp cheddar cheese, grated
• 1 Tblspn Parmigiana cheese, grated
• 1 1/2 cups of low fat yoghurt or buttermilk or sour cream.
• 2/3 cup of vegetable oil
• 1 large zucchini, grated
• 4 eggs

Add your dry ingredients to a bowl and whisk together to blend.

Add in your cheeses, onions, zucchini, eggs, yoghurt, and oil and mix together gently until just combined. Do not over mix or your muffins will be pointy and tough, and we don’t want that!

Place into greased muffin pans or use liners.

Cook for 12 minutes at 180C/350F. Muffins are done when they spring back lightly to touch and are golden on the top. Cool on a rack and store air tight.

These will freeze well.

Sometimes the best things are the simple ones. Something you can come home and make in a few minutes and have out of the oven just as quickly. Muffins were a typical afternoon snack for my older children when they came home from school, each child having their particular favourite. I think muffins were one of the first things they learned to bake, with the “do not over mix them” firmly implanted.

Muffins are baked in our house at least once a fortnight and they disappear just as quickly as they were made. Muffins are one of those things that are best fresh and warm and I am afraid to confess that the one you see above should actually have had a few more shots taken with my camera, but I ate it…..

My mother makes the most beautiful scones, as do many Kiwis. It’s the English ancestry that does it I think. Scones and pikelets are a part of NZ life. There is even a special category for them at Agricultural and Pastoral shows - where all the very best scones and the pinnacle of scone making skills are displayed.

I remember my aunt making massive batches of scones for all the shearers that had come to the farm to help with the shearing. They frightened me a little, and I used to hide behind the wool bales with my cousins and watch them cutting all that lovely fleece off the sheep. I’d wait there, knowing that the hot scones would arrive soon and the shearers would usually toss one our way.

My mother’s scones were always served with home made raspberry jam and cream. I love them like this and make them quite often. But this tutorial is for Cheddar scones, perfect with a hot bowl of soup. The recipe is an adaptation of the Edmonds Cookbook scone recipe - which is the one that most people start with when they go to whip up a batch of scones.

New Zealand Cheddar and Onion Scones.

Place in a large bowl

• 3 cups of flour
• 6 tspns baking powder
• 1/4 tspn of salt
• 50 grams of butter (chilled and cut into chunks)

Next rub the butter into the flour until it looks like fine crumbs; make sure there are no big chunks of butter left in the flour.

Add:

• one small brown onion chopped finely
• 1/2 cup strong cheddar
• 1-2 tspns parmesan cheese
• 1/2 tspn paprika

Stir through to mix

Add:

• 1 1/4 cup of whole milk (you can use 3/4 cup of milk and 1/2 cup of plain yogurt for a softer scone)

Stir with a knife - or metal spoon to just mix and no more - do not stir the heck out of it - resist the temptation.

It should look like this - a slightly sticky dough.

Place your dough on a floured bench and knead lightly, until it just comes together, flour your hands as much as needed.

Shape gently into a fat rectangle, with the dough about an inch thick - be gentle with the dough, just push it into position gently. You will notice I said gently three - err no 4 times in this little piece of instruction - that’s because I mean it!

Cut into rectangles. I like to make mine fairly large in size, I normally cut 12 or 16 scones. If you decide to cut them smaller, keep in mind they will not take as long to cook.

Place on an oven tray fairly close together, with a small gap between each one. You want to give them room to expand, but also close enough that they join together as they cook to force some height into the scone also. So roughly 1 cm or 1/4 inch. Sprinkle a little grated cheese on the top of each scone.

Bake in a 220 C or 428 F oven for 10-15 minutes. Every oven is different, so keep an eye on your scones and take them out when they are golden brown on the top and springy to the touch. You can cut one of the larger ones in half and take a peek if you are not sure. If you undercook your scones they will be doughy.

Serve while warm from the oven with butter and don’t feel the slightest bit guilty about eating several.