Donna Hay is our favorite cookbook chef. What originally attracted us to her work was the gorgeous full-page food pictures in her cookbooks. After browsing through one such book in our local bookstore, we decided we wanted to eat them all, and now we have three of her books. What we like (and sometimes don’t like) is that some of her ingredients are, what we consider, unconventional. This is because she is Australian and we are not, so some of the ingredients are different or unexpected (to us). One such ingredient is sour cream. Now, we use sour cream all the time in savory dishes, but we hadn’t used them in anything sweet. Her muffin recipe changed all that. Delicious, moist, dense, springy and flavorful are only some of the words that describe these muffins.
Ingredients (adapted from Donna Hay)
- 2 cups bread flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 3/4 cups sugar
- 1 cup (240g) sour cream
- 2 eggs
- ⅓ cup vegetable oil
- 1½ cups fresh fruit (chopped if necessary) [I used raspberries for one batch, cherries for another batch]
- handful chocolate chips as desired
Directions
- Combine flour, baking powder, sugar, sour cream, and oil.
- In a separate bowl, whisk egg until smooth.
- Stir egg into sour cream mixture.
- Stir in fruit and chocolate chips.
- Divide into greased or papered 12-muffin tin.
- Bake at 350 degrees F for 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
