Craig's Recipes

Favorite Blueberry Muffins

This recipe is really easy to make. Debra and the children really like these. The muffins are moist, fluffy and tender, and they taste good too! 

Use fresh blueberries rather than frozen because they retain their moisture better, and allow the muffin to cook around the berry. Frozen berries chill the batter around the berry and it doesn't cook as quickly as the rest of the batter in the muffin, so you can end up with your muffins not cooked around the berries, and with mushy berries. If all you have is frozen, then thaw them first.

Ingredients

6 tablespoons butter

¾ cup sugar

2 eggs

2 cups Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup milk

2 teaspoons vanilla

1½ to 2 cups blueberries

1 tablespoon sugar mixed with ½ teaspoon cinnamon (optional)

Preparing the muffins

Preheat your oven to 375°F. Grease 12 muffin cups generously; a vegetable oil pan spray works well.

In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until they're light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture, and beat well. Stir in the milk and vanilla, mixing only until smooth. Gently fold in the berries using a silicone scraper.

Aside:  Use an ice cream scoop, the kind with a thumb mechanism [amazon.com], to measure the batter and fill the muffin cups. This insures that the amount of batter in each muffin cup is consistent.

Fill the muffin cups ¾ to almost full, using all of the batter. If you have extra blueberries, then poke two or three into the top of each muffin, poking them down just until they are under the batter. Sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar. Bake the muffins for 30 minutes, until they're light golden brown, remove them from the oven, and place the pan on a rack to cool for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, run a knife around the edge of one muffin, and try to lift it out of the pan. (These muffins are very tender, and if they don't cool long enough, they'll crumble when you try to remove them from the pan.) If the muffin lifts out of the pan without crumbling, remove all of the muffins and cool them completely on a wire rack. If the muffin sticks or the top peels off, allow them to cool an additional 10 minutes, then try again.