THIS time, after last week’s walk on the wild side with raw meat, we return to the gentler side of kitchen goings-on, and have another baking session.

This week, we are hosts to friends from New York, here to explore the delights of Yorkshire for a week, and we thought they might like to feel a little at home with an all-American classic, the blueberry muffin.

It’s one of those diner menu classics, always there alongside the pancakes and maple syrup, the sunny-side-up eggs and the hash browns.

Sit on any subway train in any city across the US in the morning rush hour, and you’ll see hundreds of gargantuan muffins, clutched in the hands of commuters.

It’s a terrific power-breakfast for the worker on the move.

The muffin is something we in Europe haven’t really truly embraced, especially not as a breakfast food, which is sad, as they deliver a nice kick of slow-release energy.

I suppose they’re just a little bit too much like a cake for us to accept so early in the day, bound as we are to the deep cultural ties of the afternoon tea.

Clearly for the British, cake is very definitely something to be enjoyed long after the breakfast things have been cleared away.

Not quite a cake, and not quite a sweet bread, the muffin occupies the murky area between the two.

The cupcake, resplendent with its whirl of icing, is altogether more sweet and substantial, and the tea breads like brioche and malt loaf are generally much less on the sugary side.

So the muffin ploughs a lone furrow, and seems happy enough with its place in the canon.

It is immensely versatile. There is much you can do with the basic recipe once you’ve found one that works.

Different flours are worth exploring; bran muffins are very popular, especially with tart fruit like dried or fresh cranberries.

I expect chestnut flour would make a delicious muffin, handy to know for the gluten-free among us. Where the muffin really shines is with fruit, be it dried, semi-dried or fresh.

From the creamy fragrance of a ripe banana chopped into the mix, to the tartest of blackcurrants, fruit sits really well in the warm, sweet, chewy cake-iness of it all.

You could try raspberries, perhaps with a few chunks of white chocolate.

How about apple and blackberry? It’s high season for both right now, and they do go so well together.

Dig about in the freezer, and you’re likely to find some frozen fruit that will spoon into the batter and make a most memorable muffin.

Blueberries are just ending their season right now – you’d never know, though, they seem to be on our supermarket shelves 365 days a year; do watch those airmiles! – so we’d best make use of them before they’re gone for another year.