I’m cheating a little by posting this recipe today: I actually baked these muffins months ago. However, we just took the leftovers out of the freezer and ate them two days ago, so what was old is new again, right?

This isn’t a particularly avant-garde recipe. The original (written down many years ago) was a Williams Sonoma recipe for white-flour muffins with rhubarb and crystallized ginger, beloved by myself and my mother for its versatility – it can use yogurt, sour cream or buttermilk, depending what you have on hand, and it’s very good with tart apples or cranberries instead of rhubarb. I also like that the batter doesn’t need delicate treatment – often with muffin batter you need to fold the ingredients together until just combined, and no more – but this stuff can be stirred as much as you like and it still bakes up fluffy and tender.

For some reason this time I wasn’t in the mood for ginger (besides, we didn’t have any candied ginger in the house) and I wanted a bit more flavor in the muffin itself, so I added a bit of whole wheat flour and limited the additions to just rhubarb. It just occurred to me, though, this would have been great with a bit of orange zest added in with the fruit. Hmmm…maybe next time.

Rhubarb muffins with whole wheat flour

adapted from something by Williams-Sonoma, sometime in the dim past

• 1 cup chopped rhubarb
• 2 cups all-purpose unbleached flour
• 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup canola oil
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup yogurt
• 3/4 cup white sugar

Preheat the oven to 400°. Put paper muffin cups in your muffin tins – you will need between 16 and 18 cups. Add a spoonful of water to any empty tins.

Combine the egg, oil, milk, yogurt and sugar in a bowl and whisk smooth. Combine the flours, soda, salt and baking powder in another bowl. Add the rhubarb to the wet ingredients, stir together, then dump it all into the bowl of dry ingredients. Stir until all the flour is mixed in. Scoop into your muffin tins, not filling each cup more than 3/4 full.

Bake for 15 minutes, until just golden on top.

These freeze and reheat quite well, if you have any left over!