Blueberry Muffins

This past week, the blueberries on my little blueberry bush have finally started to ripen. This is the first year we’ve gotten fruit off our little plant so I’ve been more excited than I probably should be about this phenomenon. To celebrate, I decided I should find a new blueberry-something recipe to try out.

I found this recipe for blueberry muffins on the site Once Upon a Chef. It’s a very simple and quick to make recipe, but it’s absolutely delicious!

In a medium sized bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the unsalted butter and sugar together until light and fluffy (2-3 minutes). I didn’t have unsalted butter when I decided to make these, so I used salted instead. However, I reduced the amount of salt added to the flour mixture.

Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Add the vanilla and almond extracts and beat to combine.

Add the flour mixture in three additions, alternating with the milk (1/3 flour, 1/2 milk, 1/3 flour, 1/2 milk, 1/3 flour), mixing after each addition until just combined.

Wash and dry the blueberries, then add them to the batter.

Use a spatula to gently fold the berries into the batter until evenly distributed. You don’t want to use a mixer for this part or you’ll beat the berries up.

Line a 12 cup muffin tin with paper liners. Divide the batter across the 12 muffin cups. The cups will be VERY full. I filled them to the brim and still had enough batter leftover to make a 13th muffin. But after baking them I realize I could have crammed the extra batter into the tin and it would have been okay.

After filling the tins, I also poked 3 extra blueberries onto the top of each one, to ensure that when they baked you’d be guaranteed to see some ooey gooey blueberries on the surface.

The original recipe says to sprinkle some turbinado sugar onto the top of each muffin before baking. Turbinado sugar isn’t something I usually buy, so I decided to try using brown sugar instead. I only sprinkled it on top of half the muffins because I wanted to see what the difference would be like without it.

There are some differences between brown sugar and turbinado sugar. Brown sugar is basically just white sugar that has had molasses added back into it. It has a rich flavour and the crystals are quite small. Turbinado sugar on the other hand, is less processed than white sugar. It has had most, but not all, of the molasses spun out of it, so it is still slightly brown in colour. Turbinado sugar has a much more subtle sort of caramel flavour than brown sugar, and the crystals are larger in size. It’s texture is more similar to white sugar.

Once you’ve sprinkled your turbinado sugar, or brown sugar, on top of the batter, bake the muffins at 375°F for about 30 minutes. The tops will be golden brown.

Allow the muffins to cool in the pan for 5-10 minutes before removing them from the pan and transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely.

I think the muffins tasted great with or without the extra sugar on top (Collin preferred the sugary tops). I think the turbinado sugar would work better than the brown sugar for giving the muffins a thin, evenly crunchy top. The brown sugar is hard to sprinkle evenly over the surface. However, the brown sugar still added a nice bit of flavour and sweetness.

One thing I hate is pale, anemic looking muffins, but these muffins baked up with a beautiful golden surface. They’re very moist and absolutely LOADED with blueberries. I will definitely be baking these muffins again.

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