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…..

I looked at the large bowl of leftover porridge sitting in the kitchen. I thought about putting it out on the lawn for the birds to eat but that seemed like a bit of a waste, especially with three children in the house.

I decided I would have a hunt on the internet for something to do with the leftover oatmeal. There were quite a number of people suggesting leaving it to cool and then frying it like a pancake, but I could see my three darling children turning their cute little noses up at that. There was also a recipe for a cake, which seemed like far too much effort at the time. But I found a recipe for muffins, which sounded like it might have possibilities, although somewhat on the plain side. So I jazzed it up a little, and this is what the leftover oatmeal transformed into.

Morning Oatmeal Muffins

Wet Mix

• 1/2 cup of melted butter or margarine or oil ( you can use any of these they will all work fine)
• 1 grated apple or pear
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup leftover porridge/oatmeal
• 1/2 cup of sultanas
• 1/2 cup of long thread coconut
• 1 tspn of vanilla

Dry Mix

• 1 cup of flour
• 2/3 cup of brown sugar
• 1 tspn baking powder
• 1 tspn baking soda
• 1 tspn cinnamon

• Cinnamon sugar for dusting the tops - optional

I also added in some finely chopped glace papaya chunks since I happened to have some in the kitchen.

Place the wet mix ingredients in a large bowl and use a whisk to mix just to break up any lumps of oatmeal.

Sift the dry mix into the wet mix and stir just to combine.

One of the secrets of making good muffins is not to stir too much. Muffins should be stirred as little as possible. The more you stir the tougher the muffin. If you see peaks on your muffins when you take them out of the oven it’s because you have over mixed them. Restraint is the answer.

Fill muffin cups 2/3 full with the mixture. Bake for roughly 15 minutes at 180C/350F -  they may require slightly more than this. They are done if they spring back when touched.

If you want to you can brush the tops lightly with melted butter and dip in cinnamon sugar. Or just sprinkle a small amount on before baking, or leave it off altogether. Muffins are pretty flexible little things, they are fun to play around with. I’d love to see what variations you come up with of your own for these.

This makes 12 regular sized muffins. Who would have thought leftover oatmeal could make something so good? In Isaac’s wise words “these muffins are really, really yummy!”