Nigel Slater’s recipes for breakfast muffins, and kipper cakes with dill sauce – The Guardian
Few things galvanise the appetite quite like a pre-breakfast walk on a winter’s morning. Returning home, newspaper and loaf of bread in hand, it is then that the hob is lit, the coffee is on and the kitchen table becomes the best place in the world. If there are guests around, there will be something more than a bacon sandwich on our plates. Sometimes, there may be the plump little fish cakes I made this week. Crisp golden cushions of smoked fish and mashed potato, good for breakfast or supper, eaten with a jar of zappy pickles on the side.
It is usual to let any cake settle before eating, but these breakfast muffins can be eaten as soon as they are baked
The recipe is useful in that you can make it the day before, patting the cakes into rounds and leaving them in the fridge overnight. I use prepared fillets to save the pernickety task of tugging out the fine bones that lurk down each side of a whole kipper. Time is saved, but I rather miss not seeing the shimmering gold, silver and black of the splendid, opened-out smoked fish.
There may also be plain or fruit-studded porridge, or perhaps plump muffins with seeds and oats. The marriage of raspberries and oats is probably best appreciated in an autumn cranachan, where the two are layered together in a wine glass with whipped cream and whisky for dessert, but I know them better as breakfast partners.
On a grey winter’s morning, when apples and pears are welcome but have become ever-present, a splodge of crimson berry – albeit from the freezer – is a cheering sight in a bowl of Bircher muesli or studded into a ricotta pancake.
For the weekend, I tossed a handful of frozen berries into a batch of oat muffins and, tucking into the warm breakfast cakes with their crunchy crown of blue poppy seeds, I was rather pleased I had. We ate the rest of the batch, briefly warmed, to cheer up a parky Monday morning.
Breakfast muffins
It is usual to let any cake settle and cool before eating, but I do recommend that these little breakfast muffins are eaten as soon as they are baked. The orange zest teases out the raspberries’ flavour, the poppy seeds add a welcome crunch. They are not sweet, so if you would like them to be, add …….