BLUEBERRY OAT MUFFIN

Simple, nutritious and pack with fiber!

Recently, I had a request from a parent for a quick healthy breakfast meal recipe for her 4-year old daughter. Instead of the usual plain cereal with milk or toast bread for breakfast, why not try baking muffins for your young ones! These are not your typical muffins. Not only are they delicious, they are packed with oats and blueberries (yes, fruits!). Each of these add texture and flavour to the muffins. So here's the recipe:-

Ingredients:

225g self-raising flour

120ml vegetable oil

2 eggs, beaten

150g brown sugar

200g buttermilk or full fat plain yoghurt

60g blended roll oats

15g nonblended roll oats (for topping)

150g blueberries

Methods:

1. Preheat the oven to 220 degree celcius and fill a muffin tray with 12 paper cases.

2. Gently mix together the flour, oil, eggs and 125g of brown sugar until just combined.

3. Fold in the yoghurt, 60g of the blended roll oats and the blueberries and mix well.

4. Divide between the muffin cases.

5. Sprinkle with the remaining brown sugar and oats.

6. Bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 15-18 minutes until golden, risen and a skewer comes out cleanly when inserted in.

Make sure the flour, oil, eggs and brown sugar are mixed well first. It doesn't need to be that well mixed; as long as you don't see any specks of flour in the mixing bowl, then it should be fine. After that, fold in the yoghurt.

If you do not have fresh blueberries, you can always use frozen blueberries. Make sure you mix some flour to the frozen blueberries to avoid:-

(a) 'Bleeding' into the mixture, giving that blue purple color streak. You want the berries to 'burst' when you take a bite instead of getting your muffins streaked.

(b) Berries sinking to the bottom

As for the muffin topping, mix the remaining 25g of brown sugar with non-blended rolled oats and sprinkle the muffin before putting the muffin tray into the oven. Another option is to omit the brown sugar and just use rolled oats as the topping. Lots of fiber, indeed!

If your child prefers a crunchy texture, you can make oat crumble topping instead.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup of oats

1/4 cup of flour

2 Tbsp brown sugar

4 Tbsp butter, melted

Methods:

1. Whisk together the oats, flour and sugar.

2. Stir in butter until a crumble texture is formed.

Do share photos/tips of this delicious, simple and healthy breakfast muffin. Happy baking!