Chocolate and Sour Cherry Muffins by Summer Harvest Cold Pressed Rapeseed Oil

A quick and easy recipe which you can add to or take away from. Try substituting blue-berries for the cherries or leave out the chocolate!

Our family has been farming the green hills of the Strathearn Valley, Perthshire, for over 130 years, the last fifty of them on Ferneyfold Farm, just ten miles north of Gleneagles, between Perth and Crieff.

Everything we need to make the perfect bottle of Summer Harvest is found on Ferneyfold’s 400 acres. We grow all of our own crops, we press all of our oil and we watch every finished bottle leave by the same farm road we use to reach the barns and the fields. Every bottle of Summer Harvest contains a little bit of Perthshire and a great deal of Ferneyfold love and attention.

Summer Harvest is a member of The Scottish Cold Pressed Rapeseed Oil Group which promotes a number of rapeseed oil producers from across Scotland. Together they are spreading the message as to why rapeseed oil should be in every kitchen across the UK.

For more information visit www.scotrapeseedoil.co.uk or www.summerharvestoils.co.uk 

Ingredients: Makes 12 muffins
4floz ‘Summer Harvest Cold Pressed Rapeseed Oil’
8floz milk
1 medium egg
1tsp of vanilla extract
175g / 6oz plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
40g / 1.5oz cocoa powder (or powdered drinking chocolate)
110g / 4oz caster sugar
110g / 4oz of good quality chocolate chips
A small bag of dried soured cherries

Method:
1.    Pre-heat the oven to 200°C.
2.    Place the muffin cases into the baking moulds.
3.    Take two separate bowls and in on of these bowls mix together the flour, baking powder, caster sugar and cocoa powder (after sieving).
4.    In the second bowl mix together the eggs, milk, vanilla extract and rapeseed oil.
5.    Pour the contents of the wet bowl into the dry bowl and combine, to keep the mixture light do not over work it. Combine in the cherries and the chocolate chips.
6.    Divide the mixture into 12 muffin cases and bake for 20 minutes.
7.    A great snack with a cup of milk for the children and a cup of coffee for the adults.

In association with Taste Communications, Scotland’s food and drink communications company www.tastecommunications.co.uk