These muffins are a lazy stir away when you're up late on a weekend morning. If you love greasy, sticky, jam dripping doughnuts (those hip expanding, soul satisfying fiends) but virtuously shun them because your hips are already sorely testing the stitching on your jeans, deny yourself no more. These jammy, but otherwise relatively harmless muffins will satisfy those forbidden cravings without adding to the burden on your already beleaguered jeans; no guarantees though, if you eat more than three. They may not have the same "kick" as an oil soaked, sugar dusted, jam oozing, bona fide doughnut but they'll get you where you want to go, without that dreaded calorific punch or the post indulgence guilt.

Preparation: 10 mins        Cook:  18 mins        Yields: 10 muffins

150 g (1 1/2 teacups) plain (all-purpose) flour      
1 level tsp baking soda  
2 level tsp cream of tartar  
3 level Tbsp fine oatmeal      
75 g (3/4 teacup) icing (confectioners) sugar     
70 ml (1/3 teacup) light vegetable oil (soy/sunflower/canola etc)  
150 ml (3/4 teacup) buttermilk or low fat plain yogurt
1 egg  
1 tsp vanilla extract  
High fruit content strawberry, cherry or raspberry jam

Preheat oven at 185 C. Grease a 12-hole muffin tin.

Put flour, baking soda and cream of tartar in a large bowl and whisk till well combined, ensuring there are no lumps of baking soda or cream of tartar. Stir in oatmeal and sugar and make a well in the centre of mixture.

In a separate bowl or jug, stir together the oil, buttermilk or yogurt, egg and vanilla until well combined.

Pour the liquid mixture into the well of the dry mixture, while stirring gently with a whisk.  Stop stirring as soon as there is no more unmixed flour. It’s very important that you don’t over mix the batter as this will result in heavy, chewy muffins. 

Using an ice cream scoop, put 1 scoop of batter into each hole of the muffin tray. Drop a teaspoon of jam into the centre of batter and top with another scoop of batter. Bake for 15 – 18 minutes or until golden and well risen.

Let muffins settle for about 5 minutes, before eating so the jam inside cools slightly. With one of these in hand, a cup of cofffee, my feet up on a chair and my nose in the morning paper - on a Saturday morning, I'm a happy girl.