I needed some emergency sweet treats for an unexpected kids’ summer holiday lunch this week, so I thought I’d give these a whirl, sent to me by the lovely folk at Provena recently. Unusually, this is a muffin mix based on oat flour, which I’ve not tried before. But that shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, as Provena specialise in gluten free oats.

The instructions are incredibly simple: mix the packet with 150ml melted margarine and 3 eggs. Mix until even and divide between 8 large or 20 small muffin cups. Even I can handle that with 4 noisy boys running around the place!

I never cook with margarine and I prefer the taste of butter, so I don’t keep it in. And as I had 4 kids in the house and no chance of popping out, I decided to run the risk of using the butter I already had in the mix and hoped it would be ok…

The mix was very easy to make and it combined really well. Although I thought it a bit odd at first, I actually liked measuring the butter by volume rather than weight, as it melts to a perfect level so you can see exactly the right amount.

I filled 8 muffin cases as evenly as I could and cooked them for the full 17 minutes after checking them at 13. As you can see, some of the muffins had a bit of a splurt out, but they cooked fine other than that. I wonder if that could be to do with using butter instead of margarine?

When the muffins had cooled a bit, I nipped off the bits that had leaked out to neaten them up, which gave a nice opportunity to have a sneaky taste before the kids snaffled them. Warm fresh muffin straight from the oven. The texture was nice and soft, and they had a good chocolatey taste, just right for kids. I’d say they were less dense than your usual non-gluten-free muffin, but lovely and light. Maybe more like sponge cake than muffin, but a delicious treat nevertheless.

I think next time, I would probably add some extra chocolate pieces to give a bit of texture. And I might even splash out on some margarine!

Needless to say, a big thumbs up from the kids. And from me for them being so quick and easy to make. Thanks Provena. Given the lightness of these, I’m very tempted to try the bread mix…