When I got back from my trip from England, there was a mysterious package from Amazon.com waiting for me. It turns out that it was the Muffin Bible, ordered for me by Mum. She’d bought the related Soup Bible for herself, and thinking it excellent, and knowing that I really enjoy a home-baked muffin, ordered this book for me. The book is excellent. I suspect that it’s really an Australian publication – most of the units are metric, and it uses temperatures in celcius, indicating that it hasn’t even been edited for an American release. I find myself looking through the book on a pretty regular basis, wondering what I’ll bake from it. It really is a pretty complete volume – I’m yet to think of something that one could conceivably put into a muffin and not find a recipe (or two or three!). My have just two complaints about the book: First, it’s quite thick, and it can be difficult to get it to stay open on the page you’re working from. It might be better if it were spiral-bound instead. Second, it has a less than complete index. I just lists the recipes by name (which happens to be the order that they are in the book, anyway), and doesn’t necessarily help you find recipes that use a particular ingredient that you might have on hand.

On Wednesday, my box had fresh raspberries in it, and I knew I had to do something with them, quickly, before they spoiled. Last night, I made Fresh Raspberry Muffins from the Muffin Bible. The recipe wasn’t really like any muffin recipe that I’d ever made before – the dough was quite stiff – and the resulting muffins were quite different from any I’d ever eaten before, but they were delicious! I suspect they’d be quite good broken open, toasted, and slathered with butter (but, then again, what isn’t good slathered with butter?), although I’m yet to try that serving option.

To read this with pictures, go here.