Muffins, Magnolia and Makara

On Friday afternoon, I had a sudden longing for a sultana scone for some reason.  So, I came home and whipped up a batch (which seemed to disappear quite quickly, thanks to Anton), lay down on the sofa with a pot of tea, and finally, after years of it sitting in my ‘to read’ pile of books, picked up Haruki Murakami’s ‘1Q84’, which I seem to be getting through reasonably quickly.  I’m a big fan of his work, and confess to only leaving this so long to read because it was hard back and a bit heavy to cart around.

Saturday’s baking turned out to be citrus poppy seed muffins, tangy with orange and lemon, and soft and crumbly in texture.  I just made my standard easy muffin mix: 375g self raising flour, 90g butter, rubbed in, then stir in 220g caster sugar, 310ml buttermilk (or rather, milk with lemon juice as can never find buttermilk and always have milk to use up) and 1 egg, pour into a 12 ‘hole’ muffin tin, bake for 20 minutes at 200C.  I added the grated rind of one orange and one lemon plus two generous teaspoons of poppy seeds at the stirring stage.

A lonely little citrus poppy seed muffin

The weather was a bit mixed on Saturday, so it was yet another good excuse to make a pot of tea and lie about with my (heavy) book.

Sunday, however, was a gorgeous sunny day, so we drove out to Makara again, had lunch at Makara Beach Cafe, and took a short stroll along by the water, breathing in the lovely, salty seaside air.

Despite the weather being back to grey and cold again today, there are signs of spring, with the tulips coming up on our terrace and in the Botanic Gardens and our magnolia almost ready to bloom (the ones in the Botanic Gardens are already in flower).

Magnolia buds

So, fingers crossed the weather improves, though from what I can see, it looks like rain all week.