BLUEBERRY/SASKATOON MUFFINS

For the past few summers, the DH and I have picked strawberries and saskatoon berries (not all at the same time) at a U-Pick farm close to where we live.  It is not hard to pick a couple of ice cream pails of fruit when you don't have to walk far in search of saskatoon bushes.  For those of you that have never tasted saskatoons, they are similar to blueberries but are more tart, they have a bit of a tougher skin and can be smaller in size.  After cleaning and drying the strawberries and saskatoons, I place several cups into a freezer bag and put them into the freezer for future use.

I tend to use the frozen fruit in muffins, smoothies and pancakes.  Sometimes I will defrost part of a bag of fruit and add some of this fruit to a bowl of yogurt.   The biggest challenge I sometimes have is remembering all of the fruit that I have stashed away in the freezer as I don't always use up the frozen supply before the new berry season has started.

For the following recipe I used a photo of the batter to just give you a different view of the recipe.  Of course I used saskatoons.

BLUEBERRY/SASKATOON MUFFINS

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup milk or buttermilk

1 egg beaten

¼ cup canola

¼ cup applesauce

1 cup wheat bran

1 ½ cups flour (whole or white or combination)

1/3 cup brown sugar

1 ½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

1 cup blueberries or saskatoons

DIRECTIONS:

In a bowl, combine the milk, egg, oil and applesauce.

In a second bowl, combine the wheat bran, flour, sugar, baking powder and soda.   Add the wet mixture and berries to this  second bowl.   Mix until combined.

Bake at 375 degrees F for 20 to 25 minutes.  Depending on the size of your muffin tins, the recipe makes 12 to 18 muffins.

Variations:

Instead of the applesauce you can use molasses.

To create a lemon flavour, you can add 1 ½ tsp of grated lemon rind and 1 tbsp of lemon juice.