Chocolate Muffins

When my daughter was little, I struggled to produce the home-baking that the other earth mothers seemed to manage easily. No comforting smell of home-made cakes greeted her when she came home from school, no bonding moments decorating fairy cakes together, no bars of Nigella Lawson's rocky road crunch bars nestling in her lunch box.

Then I discovered muffins. Stick everything in a bowl and stir, plonk into paper cases (the fancier the better - it distracts from any dishevelled looks), and bung into an oven. Foolproof. Any burnt bits can be covered up with a light dusting of icing sugar, or dipped in melted chocolate if more drastic remedial action is needed.

The photo shows just a small part of the enormous glass roof of Waverley station, where the train from York dropped off my daughter for a weekend at home. Winter chocolate muffins are now being eaten, so called because of the light sprinkling of snow on the top.

Song