Blueberry muffins with lemon ricotta cheese - recipe

I have often been fascinated (whilst travelling in the USA I might add) by the way some people have a tendency to split and stuff sweet or savoury muffins at breakfast time. They put a dollop of either cream cheese or butter inside the muffin and then microwave them. It's not something that I have never tried myself, having been torn partway between thinking...its a bit of a strange thing to do with a muffin, but also wanting to try it too. I have often wondered how muffins taste like that and especially with a soft cheese centre...you can see where this is heading...right?

This recipe came about because of this moment of wondering or pondering and because this was one of those weekends where there were 'fresh things' to be used up in the fridge; so I decided to give these blueberry muffins with lemon cheese things a whirl.

They came out really well, and we really liked them, so much so that we gave most of them away to a bunch of teachers to try (its the calories folks we can only eat so much here!). These muffins were not too sweet and the soft sweet cheese centre scented with lemon gave a different texture. That centre with the lovely plump blueberries intertwined was a nice combination. They might not be exactly like the cream cheese stuffed American ones but they were pretty darn tasty!

Try these warm for breakfast if you dare, as they do in the USA, I don't think you'll be disappointed...we could all become converts!

Ingredients:
250g fresh blueberries (keep 100g to one side for the tops)
250ml Jersey full cream milk
85g melted unsalted butter

300g self raising flour

1tsp baking powder
2 large free range eggs
75g golden caster sugar
Pinch sea salt
1tsp vanilla extract
250g ricotta cheese
grated zest of 1 unwaxed lemon
1 tbsp sifted icing sugar
Method:
1. Pre heat the oven to 180C fan.
2. Line a muffin tray with 12 muffin size cases.
3. Put the ricotta cheese in a bowl and grate the lemon zest over it, add a tablespoon of sifted icing sugar to sweeten and mix together.
4. Put the flour, baking powder, sea salt and sugar into the bowl of a stand mixer. In a jug whisk together the milk, the 2 large free range eggs, the vanilla extract and the cooled melted butter. Add this milk/butter mix to the dry ingredients. Start the mixer off slowly to incorporate then increase the speed until the batter is smooth and creamy.
5. Add all but 100g of the blueberries and mix with a large spoon but mix gently to get all the blueberries coated in batter.
6. Put some of the blueberry batter into the muffin cases, but only fill them about a third full. Once this is done add a teaspoon of the ricotta cheese mixture, try to get this in the middle of the blueberry batter if you can.
7. Top each case with more blueberry batter and make sure this covers the top of the cheese mixture. Add a few blueberries to the top of each mix.
8. Bake for 35-40 minutes until golden brown.

Serve warm...but cold is quite good too.