Hi everyone! I am Georgiana, founder of SpeakEnglishPodcast.com. My mission is to help you speak English fluently.

In today's lesson, I'll talk about baking. I'll teach you how to bake my favorite blueberry muffins. So if you want to enrich your English vocabulary and try out my favorite muffin recipe, I suggest that you continue listening.

And with a point of view lesson, you will improve your English grammar intuitively without memorizing any rules.

Ok, let's start!

I don't know about you, but I love baking.

And the easiest recipe I know, and the one my friends like best, is blueberry muffins.

People are very used to eating all sorts of pastries that contain an incredible amount of sugar, yet one of the things they love most about my cakes is the fact that I add very little sugar.

That's why I started baking. I'm not too fond of pies with a lot of sugar either.

So today, I'm going to share with you my blueberry muffin recipe.

Are you excited?

Oh, I'm sure that if you try these muffins, you're going to love them.

If you've never heard the word muffin, then you probably know the term cupcake.

A cupcake is very similar to a muffin, but it is always sweet and often covered with frosting.

Wait a minute, what's frosting?

It's a sweet mixture that we use to decorate and fill cakes.

Muffins, on the other hand, are generally considered healthier than cupcakes. They are usually made with whole wheat flour and loaded with fruit.

It is not easy to describe how a muffin looks, but the only real difference between a slice of cake and a muffin is the shape. But just to give you an idea, a muffin looks like an oversized mushroom.

It's very easy to make them. It doesn't matter if you're a master chef or if you never set foot in the kitchen.

And all you need is 30 minutes, 10 minutes of preparation, and cook for 20 minutes.

And don't worry because you won't even need a food processor.

A food processor is an electric machine that cuts, slices, and mixes food quickly.

But in this case, you will only need a mixing bowl.

Before we start cooking, let's take a look at the ingredients we need for the muffins.

This is an essential step. You have to make sure you have all the ingredients ready before you start baking. This will speed up the preparation and ensure that no ingredients are missing.

This has happened to me more than once. The other day I wanted to bake a carrot cake, and I was pretty sure I had some carrots in the refrigerator. It turns out that there weren't any carrots in the fridge, so I had to shop for groceries, and that ruined the moment.

Before we go any further, let's get a little better understanding of how we measure the ingredients.

In the US, we use cups, tablespoons, and teaspoons in our recipes.

To follow this recipe, you'll need some measuring cups and spoons. You can get them online or in your local store.

Let's see how this works:

One cup is 8 ounces or 236 ml.

One tablespoon is 15 ml.

One teaspoon is 5 ml.

But what if we want to use half a cup or one-third of a cup? That's a little more confusing for you. So let's take a look at some examples:

1/2 cup - one-half/half (half a cup)

1/3 cup - one-third (one-third of a cup)

2/3 cup - two-thirds of a cup

1/4 cup - a quarter (a quarter of a cup)

2/4 cup - two quarters (two-quarters of a cup)

3/4 cup - (three-quarters of a cup)

1/5 cup - (one-fifth of a cup)

2/5 cup - (two-fifths of a cup)

3/5 cup - (three-fifths of a cup)

4/5 cup - (four-fifths of a cup)

These are the ingredients for the blueberry muffins:

1 1/2 (one and a half) cups of all-purpose flour (195 grams)

3/4 (three-quarters of a) cup of granulated sugar (150 grams)

Two teaspoons of baking powder (10 grams)

1/4 (a quarter of a) teaspoon of fine sea salt (1.42 grams)

1/3 (one-third of a) cup of oil (80ml)

One large egg

1/2 (half) a cup of milk (120ml)

1 1/2 (one and a half) teaspoons of vanilla extract (7.5 grams)

1 cup of fresh or frozen blueberries; (128 g)

I usually use frozen blueberries, by the way.

If you use frozen fruit, do not thaw it (don't defrost).

With these quantities, you will get eight large muffins, ten standard muffins, or 20 mini muffins.

First, heat the oven to 400º Fahrenheit or 204º Celsius.

You'll need a muffin tin or a muffin tray and some paper liners or paper baking cups.

Add the paper liners or paper baking cups in the muffin tray. For the large muffins, you'll need eight paper liners, and for the medium ones, ten.

To make sure the muffins bake evenly, fill the remaining cups with 1 or 2 tablespoons of water.

HOW TO MAKE THE BATTER?

By the way, the batter is the mixture of ingredients used in baking.

To prepare the batter, you'll need to whisk the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl.

When you whisk something, you stir it quickly and lightly with a kitchen tool, which is also called a whisk. And if you don't have a whisk, just use a fork.

Add the oil, the egg, and then the milk. Pour in the vanilla extract and whisk to combine.

Add the liquid mixture to the bowl of dry ingredients. Then use a fork or a whisk to combine. After that, add the blueberries.

How do we bake the muffins?

We will fill 8 to 10 muffin cups until the batter reaches the top of the baking paper cups.

We will bake the muffins for 15 to 20 minutes at 400º Fahrenheit or 204º Celsius.

The mini muffins take about 10 minutes to bake. I use a mini muffin tray that allows me to bake up to 24 mini muffins.

When we take the muffins out of the oven, we'll place them on a cooling rack until they cool.

What's a cooling rack?

We use a cooling rack or wire rack to allow the air to circulate freely to cool the muffins. That prevents them from getting soggy from condensation.

Once the muffins are cooled, we place them in a plastic bag, seal, and store at room temperature for 2 to 3 days.

That's it! Now you can enjoy some delicious blueberry muffins.

Ok. Let’s continue with a point of view story.