This morning, while deciding what to have for breakfast before I headed into the lab, I realized we still had a significant number of blueberries hanging around the house. So why not make some muffins? Lab could wait while I whipped these up.
We pulled out one of my favorite cookbooks, Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for More Food and used his basic muffin recipe, which is good for all sorts of add-ins. Blueberries included.
Ingredients:
2 1/4 c. AP flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
pinch salt
1 c. plain yogurt (we used vanilla)
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1/2 c. granulated sugar
1/2 c. oil (I learned my lesson and didn't attempt to substitute applesauce in this one.)
1-2 c. blueberries (we were on the 1 c. end of this range, but more would have been nice. AB also says that pretty much anything goes, but don't go over 1c. of chips if you're making chocolate/butterscotch/whatever chip muffins.)
Mix together the dry and wet ingredients separately, then combine loosely with a good spatula (no overmixing allowed!) When the wet and dry are about half mixed, add in the blueberries and finish mixing until most of the dry has disappeared into the wet. Scoop into a greased and floured (we just use canola oil spray) muffin tin, filling each spot 3/4 to entirely full - if you don't fill almost to the top, you won't get that nice dome look that you want in a muffin!
Sprinkle with a little extra sugar, about 1 tsp. total, if you want. I really like the extra crunch on top of my muffin, and we had some fancy vanilla sugar (bought at the Scharffen Berger factory by my mother) hanging around, which seemed perfect for this purpose. Bake at 375°F for 18-20 minutes until golden brown/about 210°F in the middle. Serve warm with butter, or without, they're tasty either way.
This makes 12 normal sized muffins, but we used a giant muffin pan and got 6 "restaurant size" muffins, which had to bake an extra 5 minutes. I wouldn't recommend making mini muffins with blueberries, but if you were using something smaller (currants, for example) it might be okay.
These were totally delicious and the perfect weekend breakfast food. The muffin was not too sweet and the perfect consistency - not too wet but not dry at all. In the future, I might try to play with adding some spices, but it's just right as-is. And it was quick! It took about ten minutes to prepare the batter, less than half an hour to bake, and I was able to wash and dry all the dishes AND make coffee while they were in the oven. So, I'm glad I "took the extra time" (in reality, maybe ten minutes tops) to bake something fresh and delicious for breakfast instead of just having a bowl of cereal.
I've seen a lot of other blueberry recipes floating around lately too. There are a couple that I'm aching to try, namely this Blueberry Cranberry Bread (from Coconut&Lime) and these Blueberry Breakfast Bars (from Farmgirl Fare). What's your favorite thing to make with blueberries?
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