I wanted a quick, easy recipe that used blueberries; something that wasn’t groaning with icings or glazes and wasn’t bettered with a dollop of cream. A real old fashioned afternoon tea bite for kids and adults alike.

This is it. Fling your ingredients in a bowl, clatter round it with an electric hand whisk, stir in the fruit then dollop into a muffin tin and remove, bronzed and perky (the buns too) to be inhaled and devoured gleefully. Soft, vanilla-y, blueberried and sweet. Yum.

5 mins to weigh the ingredients, 5 mins to mix and portion out and 20 mins in the oven. Perfick.

Let me show you my caster sugar:

Keep your caster in a canister and bung dried old vanilla pods into it. Smells and tastes good. Nigella’s idea.  Do you know I once saw a jar of vanilla sugar for something like £4?  I nearly fainted.

Anyway, use this if you do it, if not, use normal caster sugar – no biggie.

Put your ingredients (except the blueberries) into a large bowl

then using an electric hand whisk (or a normal hand whisk if you feel like it), combine all the ingredients until they’ve come together – took less than 10 seconds. It’ll look like this:

See there’s some residual flour at the bottom? I am always mindful of not over handling flour, so don’t try and get every molecule added – it’ll get swept in with the blueberries.

Add your blueberries and fold them in

Grease a 12 hole muffin tin either with butter, or line with papers or use this stuff ( I got it at a shop in Brighton, but you don’t want to know how much I paid for it; that said it is brilliant)

Divide the mixture among the tin

and top with the remaining berries (don’t think I’d bother with that again – just bung the lot in)

Bake for 20 minutes

leave in the tin for 5 mins, then loosen and remove to a wire rack to cool

Mmmm.

I’ve cooled them and put them in the freezer – I think I’ll be glad of those come early September when we’re entering the world of regular lunchboxing.

Or, I might be glad of them one evening when someone has gone fishing.

Shhhh.

October 2009 – We are still having the odd frozen bun for the lunchbox and I had to update to say they freeze brilliantly. I wrap one frozen bun in a piece of kitchen roll and put it straight into the lunchbox – they defrost evenly and are really moist.

Here’s the recipe

Quick Fast Blueberry Buns
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100g unsalted butter, softened
100g vanila sugar (I keep vanilla pods in my canister of sugar – don’t worry if you don’t; just use normal caster)
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
150g self raising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
100g blueberries

Preheat oven to GM4/180C/350F.
Spray 12 hole muffin tin with greasing spray or butter or line with muffin cases.

Put the butter, sugar, vanilla, eggs, flour and baking powder into a large bowl and using an electric hand whisk, whisk until together and creamy – this took about 10 seconds.
Add 75g of the blueberries – or all of them, no worries -  and stir in with a spatula (you’ll also fold in any residual flour, so don’t whisk it to death to start with).

Divide the mixture among the muffin holes and top with the remaining blueberries if you wish.
Bake for 20 mins or until risen nicely and golden brown.

Leave in the tin for 5 minutes, then loosen with a spatula and remove to a wire rack to cool.