Perfect Blueberry Muffins

from the King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion, The All-Purpose Baking Cookbook

                                   

Is anything nicer than a blueberry muffin? Torn apart with a melting pat of butter smeared across them, blueberry muffins are soft and homey, full of berries bursting with warm juice. Paired with a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, there is no better breakfast to wake up to on a weekend morning.

Pulled from the King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion, this is a lovely recipe for the quintessential blueberry muffin. Soft, with a cake-like texture, these muffins are what all muffins should aspire to. Sunny and flavorful with a hint of lemony brightness, these are sure to get your morning of to a great start.

As an aside: Muffins taste best the day they are made, but who needs to eat 12 muffins at one sitting? After breakfast, I freeze the leftover muffins in pairs in a Ziploc bag. The frozen muffins are great to toss into Lovie's lunch box. By the time lunch rolls around, they have thawed back into their original soft, fresh, doughy goodness and combined with a cheese stick and some fruit, they are the perfect mid day snack. She is always thrilled to find a sweet muffin surprise in her lunch.

Classic Blueberry Muffins

8 tablespoons (4 oz) butter
1 cup (7 oz) sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
Zest of one lemon
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 cups (8 1/2 oz) all purpose flour
1/2 cup (4 oz) milk
2 cups frozen blueberries

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

In a medium mixing bowl, cream the butter, sugar and salt together. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in the lemon zest. Add the baking powder, and then add the flour, alternating with the milk, beating well after each addition. Stir in the blueberries.

Spoon the batter into 12 paper lined muffin cups.

Bake muffins for 30 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the muffins comes out clean. Remove from the oven and let cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then removing them from the pan to cool completely.

Notes: The original recipe called for 1 teaspoon of vanilla,  2 1/2 cups of fresh or dried blueberries and 2 teaspoons of sugar to top the muffins. I added the lemon zest, reduced the blueberries to 2 cups and skipped the sugar topping.

You could bake these in muffin cups without the papers, but I have found that blueberry muffins made with fresh or frozen berries tend to fall apart if not constrained by the paper cups. Too much fruit and not enough cakey part to hold it together to count on a good result.  

Comments

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Yummy I also want to eat this.