Blueberry and Spiced Chai Muffins
Even though my suitcase was about to burst coming home last week, I managed to squeeze in a tin of spiced chai from Mabu Mabu. It is made with a blend of Indigenous spices like wattleseed, cinnamon myrtle and pepperberry as well as star anise, cardamom and clove.
After I opened the tin, I knew I didn't just want to drink it but that I wanted to bake with it too. So, I infused some of the mix with butter to make these muffins for an afternoon snack. The bursting purple blueberries and the warm spiced chai make these such a comforting thing to cook and eat. Use any spiced chai that you can find to make these and add it to the butter as I do in the recipe below. Depending on your chai mix, you can strain the butter after it simmers.
50g of butter
10ml of flavourless oil
1 tablespoon of spiced chai
200g of plain yoghurt
2 eggs
The zest and juice of half a lemon
150g of caster sugar
200g of plain flour
1 teaspoon of baking powder
A big pinch of salt
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
A little bit of nutmeg
150g of blueberries
2 tablespoons of brown sugar + 20g of butter for the top
Start by heating your oven to 180C and lining your muffin tray. In a small pot, melt the butter with the oil and then add in the spiced chai. Let this simmer for a few minutes to extract as much flavour as possible. Leave this to one side to cool as you start on the rest of the wet ingredients. In a large bowl stir together the yoghurt, eggs, lemon juice and zest with the sugar until all combined.
When the butter is cool enough, pour that into the wet mix and stir again. In another bowl, add the flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. Stir this together to incorporate everything and then add the blueberries into the flour. Slowly fold through the flour and the blueberries to the wet mix until it has just come together and you've formed a thick batter.
Spoon two tablespoons of this mix into each of the muffin liners. In a small bowl rub together the brown sugar and the butter to form the topping. Sprinkle this over the muffins and bake them for 30 minutes until golden brown.
