crisp, herby and really cheesy. yum!

This mix will make 12 muffins, or six bounteous buxom beauties like these.

Butter and flour your muffin tins.

Sieve:

4 cups flour

8 Tbspns flat baking powder

1 teaspoon mustard powder

A good pinch of flavoured or Maldon sea salt and some fresh black pepper.

Add 100g butter and blend with your fingertips until crumbly.

Mix 1 ½ cups of grated cheddar and a small handful of chopped fresh herbs such as chives, basil or lemon thyme) into 2 ½ cups of milk, and add this to the dry ingredients.

You should have a fairly stiff mix, but make sure there are no dry pockets.

Mound into your prepared tins and then using a spoon or your finger, make a hollow deep into the centre of the muffin.

Spoon in a dollop of basil pesto and top with a halved cherry or mini plum tomato.

Sprinkle with salt and pepper and bake at 200*C for 20-25 minutes.

The muffins should be beautifully browned and a skewer should come out clean.

Serve warm or cold with ripe brie, and prosciutto, drizzled with balsamic dressing, or eat with brie and avo , and have the prosciutto with fresh ripe figs.

A fabulous five page feature in May's Garden & Home

A little while ago a multi-talented and extremely stylish friend who happens to love food, steered a journalist friend of hers my way.  And so, via Morne (many thanks Morne) I met Gill Cullinan.  She arranged to come and meet me and my family for a laid back brunch, bringing along a very talented photographer, Henrique Wilding.  Turns out, we’d met Henrique years before when we helped her out with another shoot she was doing when we were still at Groot Constantia.  Also turns out, they are two extremely nice ladies.

Cheese and pesto muffins, and artichoke flan

Actually, nice is such a tepid word.  They were fantastic.  They may have got more than they bargained for with my noisy (and as Gill puts it: ‘boisterous’ family ), but they showed no fear , and so, like most of our family gatherings we all wound up in the kitchen, all talking at once, screeching with laughter, tripping over dogs, salivating over fresh cheese muffins and artichoke flan,  and generally getting on like a house on fire.

gravadlax on molasses seed loaf, and honeybaked granola

I don’t know how Gill did it, but she managed to get almost everything we said in passing, down verbatim, and weave it into a beautiful story that really shows the importance of family to me and my food style.  And as for Henrique, I will be forever grateful to her for making my food look so scrumptiously good and also for making me look much better than I did in real life that morning.  (I have decided I’m all for airbrushing, because let’s face it, if you’re going to get snapped for posterity, you may as well look good).

Thanks ladies, it was great fun, and thanks to my mom, my sister Kalli, who helped with the styling, and my daughter Dakota & puppy, Jedi, who helped with the eating.

The five page feature is out now, in May’s South African Garden & Home magazine, so pick one up if you are in SA or check out their website. 

Oh, and the cherry on the top:  Yesterday morning I had a call from a Mr Taylor, owner of a guest house on the Garden Route.  Mr Taylor was making the cheese muffins from our recipe in the magazine and just wanted to double check that the amounts printed were correct.  They are, and I hope your muffins came out beautifully Mr Taylor.  Mine came out of the oven about 15 minutes after your call, and were delicious.  It really is one of my favourite recipes.