Blueberries are on sale now--what to do with them? How about muffins?
Since I was a kid, I've been making the same old muffin recipe, and while it creates reliably good muffins, I wanted to try a more grown-up recipe. I found one in The New Best Recipe, a jumbo cookbook from Cook's Illustrated. Jeff got it for me for Christmas, and I haven't begun to scratch the surface of this 1,028-page whopper. It's loaded with great, classic recipes that have been tested and reworked until they are perfect, with drawings, sidebars, and obsessive-compulsive introductions for each recipe. I love it.
These muffins did not disappoint at all, but the blueberries were a little bland. You know what would have made the muffins better? If the berries were chocolate chips. And here's a warning: do not serve these, fresh from the oven, at some brunch get-together. The warm berries turned my teeth a horrifying shade of blue/purple, with awful dark bits clinging to the nooks and crannies of my mouth. Not attractive! I immediately brushed my teeth with a vengeance, thus rinsing away any good muffin aftertaste, but my tongue remained zombie blue for a while.
These muffins are less likely to ruin your mouth after they're cool, but who wants a cool muffin? Okay, sometimes I do, but they're better hot. If you're going to spend some time alone, by all means make these and eat them, one after another, as soon as they're done baking. Just brace yourself the next time you look in a mirror.
A note about the muffin batter: it is absolutely delicious. The recipe makes more than enough batter to fill the muffin tins, so dig the heck in.
INGREDIENTS
- 2 cups flour
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 large egg
- 1 cup sugar
- 4 tablespoons melted butter, cooled slightly
- 1 1/4 cups (10 oz) sour cream <-- I only had 8 ounces of light sour cream, so I used milk for the other 2. Muffins still awesome.
- 1 1/2 cups (7-8 oz) frozen or fresh blueberries
DIRECTIONS
Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a standard 12-cup muffin tin (Pam) and set aside. If you have a couple of standard muffin pans like I do, and one has slightly deeper cups than the other, go with the deeper one.
Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl until combined. Whisk the egg in a second medium bowl until well combined and light-colored, about 20 seconds. Add the sugar and whisk vigorously until thick and homogeneous, about 30 seconds; add the melted butter in 2 or 3 additions, whisking to combine after each addition. Add the sour cream in 2 additions, whisking just to combine.
Add the berries to the dry ingredients and gently toss just to combine. Add the sour cream mixture and fold with a rubber spatula until the batter comes together and the berries are evenly distributed, 25 to 30 seconds. (Small dots of flour may remain, and the batter will be thick. Do not overmix.)
Using a large spoon sprayed with nonstick cooking spray to prevent sticking, divide the batter among the greased muffin cups. The batter will come close to the top but will not go crazy and overflow while baking. Bake until the muffins are light golden brown and a toothpick or skewer inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes (mine was closer to 25), rotating the pan from front to back halfway through the baking time.
Invert the muffins onto a wire rack, stand the muffins upright, and cool 5 minutes. Serve as is or roll in melted butter and dip in cinnamon sugar. I merely brushed the tops with melted butter and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. Good stuff.
They look great but I don't know, I just can't get excited about anything blueberry.
Posted by: Tobin | July 12, 2011 at 07:56 PM