La Cigale French Markets

 Saturday mornings really are the make or break of the weekend, usually dictating how the rest of your Saturday or Sunday will go. Definitely for me it usually starts with a long sleep in, a carelessly thrown together breakfast and an episode of friends.

Although sometimes there is nothing better than getting up early and starting your weekend with some exercise or a healthy breakfast, or in my case doing both by heading down to the La Cigale French Markets. Whether you go to moodily sip coffee with a friend enjoying the warm heaters and a French pastry, or perusing the large colourful range of veges with a fresh juice in hand there really is a little something for everyone.

 While I don’t go as often as I would like, when I heard that Raw Kitchen, a raw healthy baking supplier for the likes of Rad café or Mondays was setting up shop there this weekend I had to go check them out. Unfortunately they don’t currently have a store so I jumped at the chance to check out all of their products without having to travel to Kingsland or Ponsonby.

Vegan 'Snickers Bar' from Raw Kitchen

 And if live street performers, a French fromagerie/bakery and a range of good food from hummus to muesli and everything in-between weren’t enough to convince you to pay a visit, there is always Organic Mechanic. As a person who has had one to many watery tasteless ‘healthy’ smoothies when I saw their chalkboards boasting a range of ‘delicious’ vegan drinks I was somewhat cynical. This was a time I was happy to be proved wrong, chocolaty, thick and smooth its impossible to believe that they only use fruit, veg and seeds!

"Hercules" Berry banana and chocolate Smoothie   

So go check it out Saturday 8am- 1pm, although as a tip beat the traffic and get the best pick of everything by getting there between 8-9.30am

Healthy Blueberry Muffins

Let me be honest with you, I hate math… and science.  Give me a camera, set of paints or pencil and paper then I’m entertained for hours, even days at a time, as long as I can remain a safe distance away from calculators and simultaneous equations.

The addition of ¼ cup and ¾ cup of flour and converting Fahrenheit to Celsius is probably as close as anyone will ever find me to algebra or calculus.

 So today in celebrations of my strong dislike for all things highly mathematical, or academic, I’m going to keep the math reeeeeeeal simple.

Winter day + day off school + fresh warm blueberry muffins = good

Winter day + day off school – fresh warm blueberry muffins = bad

Now that was relatively painless wasn’t it? So lets get to the important part…

Ingredients

•                2 cups whole wheat flour

•                ½ cup bran flakes

•                1/3 cup mejool dates soaked*

•                3 teaspoons baking powder

•                1 teaspoon salt

•                ¾ cup Almond milk/ Skim milk

•                1/2 cup canola or light vegetable oil

•                1 egg

•                Zest of one lemon/orange

•                1 cup fresh blueberries

•                ¼ cup buckwheat and linseed (optional)

•                Raw or turbinado sugar

(Makes 12 Muffins)

* If you have time to prepare, these dates are delicious when soaked overnight in a bowl with a can of light coconut cream. Over a few hours the dates absorb up the cream to create these large, sweet, soft coconutty dates. Although if you are short of time soak them in a bowl with boiling water for a few moments

 Method

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a 12 muffin cup tin with paper baking cups, or grease muffin cups.

In a medium bowl whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.

In large bowl whisk together milk, oil, egg and lemon zest. Pour dry ingredients, all at once, into wet ingredients, and stir together until dry ingredients are just moistened (batter will be lumpy). Do not over mix This is the most vital step, as if you just whisk instead of fold the muffins will turn out tough and small.

Fold in blueberries gently. Scoop or spoon the batter evenly into muffin cups, they will not rise too much so fill the cups quite high.

Sprinkle with raw sugar. Bake until golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes. Immediately remove muffins from pan to cooling rack.