Bread: Favorite Sweet Muffins (aka Surprise Muffins)

From Shelly Carey

Ingredients
1 egg
½ cup milk
¼ cup vegetable or canola oil
½ cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 ½ cups flour

Directions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease bottom of 12 medium muffin cups (each cup 2 ¾ inches in diameter). Beat egg; stir in milk and oil. Mix in remaining ingredients just until fl our is moistened. Batter should be lumpy.

Fill muffin cups 2/3 full. Bake 20 -25 minutes or until golden brown. Immediately remove from pan. Yields 12 muffins.

Variations of Sweet muffins:

Surprise muffins: (These are my favorite!) Fill muffin cups only ½ full. Drop 1 teaspoon (or up to 1 Tablespoon) of jelly in the center and add batter to fill cups 2/3 full (to cover the jelly completely).

Apple muffins with nut-crunch topping: Stir in one cup grated apple with the oil and ½ teaspoon cinnamon with the flour. Sprinkle tops with nut-crunch topping: Mix 1/3 cup packed brown sugar, 1/3 cup chopped nuts and ½ teaspoon cinnamon. Bake 25-30 minutes.

Blueberry muffins: Fold one cup of fresh blueberries or ¾ cup well-drained frozen (thawed) blueberries into batter.

Cranberry-orange muffins: Fold one Tablespoon grated orange peel and 1 cup cranberries (cut in half) into batter.