I needed something for breakfasts for this past week, and it just happened to be Autumn, so what better to fit the bill than some apple and blackberry muffins. It’s pretty much a basic, non buttermilk muffin recipe but turned purple with little bits of apple inside. You could also do it non-purple with noticable berries and larger pieces of apple, depending upon how you like your texture.

I started with frozen blackberries because that’s what I happened to have, but they’re also hugely less messy to handle than fresh. Just lay them out on a chopping board and gently apply a rolling pin to break them apart into individual berries. Or put them inside a freezer bag and smack it with the bottom of a frying pan. That works too.

I had a go at topping them with an oaty crumble mix, inspired by something I saw in a magazine, but I didn’t do at all well with making the mix. You need your crumble to be properly crunchy and not at all dry and powdery. You also need quite a bit of it, a good couple of hundred grams I think.

I’m a bit wary of having large pieces of fruit inside a baked cake, they can be hard to balance with cooking the surrounding sponge because there’s a high contrast between the fruit’s thermal mass and water content and the batter, often resulting in them being surrounded by soggy bits.

Ingredients

300g self raising flour
200g sugar
180-200ml milk depending on the size of your egg
1 beaten egg
100g melted butter
zest of 1 unwaxed lemon
200g apples
200g blackberries

Method

Sift the flour and sugar into a large mixing bowl and work in the lemon zest, egg and butter.
If you’d like your muffins to be purple, thoroughly beat in the fragments of blackberries so they disintegrate into the batter.

Peel, core and finely dice the apples.

Gently stir through the apple pieces, adding the blackberries at the end if you prefer them whole.

Spoon the mixture into muffin cases, no more than half full if you haven’t got a full depth muffin tray to support them. If you’re adding crumble, now’s the time to put half a cm on top of each muffin.

Bake in a preheated, moderate (180C if it’s a fan) oven for up to 25 minutes. Check them after 20minutes though in case their edges have started to burn.

Leave them to cool on a rack before trying to take them out of the paper cases.

Apple and Blackberry Muffins

Finished Apple and Blackberry Muffins