Rhubarb & Custard Muffins

OK, who hasn't checked out the Fab Food site yet?  What do you mean? What are you waiting for?

The latest baby of Christine Mosler of Thinly Spread, it's full of yummy wholesome recipes.

This one for Rhubarb Crumble Muffins caught my eye, and at the local farm shop this weekend I managed to get my hands on some glorious palest pink early forced rhubarb so set to making them.

Sadly I didn't have any porridge oats in so couldn't make the crumble topping.  I only had Dorset cereal in the pantry.  Yes, I know how ridiculously middle class that sounds: "dahling I have no Scottish porridge oats, but I do have some spelt granola..."

So I crumbled up some cereal, mixed it with a spoon of cinnamon and sprinkled that on top.  It gave a lovely crunchy topping, but I'm sure the actual recipe is much lovelier.

Once I'd made my muffins, they were looking good, but I wanted to get some custardy goodness in there somehow.  I love rhubarb and custard combo - I love the pudding; the boiled sweets, I even love Roobarb and Custard the cartoon.

Rummaging through my kitchen drawers, I found a squeezy bottle icing thingie that was part of a cake decorating set I got for Christmas. Aha!

I guess for a more gourmet muffin, you'd make your own vanilla custard with eggs and milk, but mine's always too runny.  Besides, I have a passion for tinned Ambrosia custard (see, not all that posh!).

It was simply a case of finding a discreet place to squeeze it in.  You could experiment with other implements - a regular piping bag may work, and I reckon one of those plastic medicine dosage syringes would work too.

The result, perfect custardy rhubarby mid-morning muffins.  Just add a shot of strong coffee for instant pick-me-up.

Special thanks to Chris for the amazing recipe, and for not minding that I tinkered with it!

Linking up with Handmade Thursday.