Cooking Confidential

Aldi just started carrying frozen blueberries; even though a fan I am of the tiny wild Canadian blueberries from Trader Joe’s, I was there and they were reasonable. I must say that for standard issue large commercial style blueberries, they are better than average, with a decent amount of blueberry flavor, not just color…

And so I made blueberry muffins today for the first time in a long time. I have tried many, many recipes for this quintessentially American breakfast treat over the years, always on the lookout for the perfect balance between muffin and fruit. The older recipes as well as the current coffee shop variety never have enough fruit for my taste, but the newer recipes are literally too flat –which is what happens when you lighten up on the batter.

Here’s my recipe that I adapted from a very nice little volume that I bought about 20 years ago when we lived on the outskirts of Alexandria VA. Creative recipes for muffins were hitting their stride at the time…During the same period,I also bought and used quite frequently a little muffin encyclopedia, the name of which I don’t remember and  the pieces of which I lost somehow in my last move (I’m still a little sad).
Set the oven to 400 degree.
In a large mixing bowl, measure out 1 cup of all purpose white flour, 1 cup of white whole wheat flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, 3/4 teaspoon baking soda, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1 cup sugar, generous gratings of nutmeg (1/2 teaspoon? I must remember to measure next time, and 1/2 a small lemon’s worth of rind. Cut into that 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, rubbing it in well– this is where my newly acquired standing mixer really comes in handy: just attach the regular beater and let ‘er rip!

In another bowl, mix 2 eggs with 1/2 cup buttermilk and 1/2 cup regular milk (I only use whole milk for baking).

In a small bowl combine about 3 tablespoons sugar, 1/2 tablespoons (1/2 teaspoons) cinnamon and if you have it, a couple tablespoons ground almonds.
Line a muffin pan with foil non stick baking cups ( Reynold brand is available. DO NOT USE PAPER !!!! They are guaranteed to stick!!!! The bakers’ parchment cups are OK, but do not hold their shape around the muffin as well as the foil after the muffins are removed from the muffin pan.
Have your bag of blueberries ready, plus measuring cup.

Combine wet and dry ingredents, stirring and scraping the sides of bowl until just combined. Add 2 cups of berries, but measure out yet another cup of berries– you will be adding these later to the filled muffin cups.

Fill muffin cups, mounding them well.Then distribute the remaining cup of blueberries between the filled cups, pushing them down with your finger so that they are surrounded by batter– as you do so, poke around to insure that those cups with contain fewer berries get a few more than average in the distribution process Quite frankly, I frequently wind up filling up a 13th cup and baking it in my little 6-muffin pan along side the large one.
Generously sprinkle tops with spiced sugar.

Bake until tops spring back when gently poked with your finger, probably about 25 minutes because of size and frozen berries. Unfortunately, I never remember to make note of the actual time…..

After removing from the oven, be sure to take a knife, or some type of non-scratch edge/blade to gently loosen the sugary edges of the topping from the pan surface before it cools and hardens: This is why I bought a nice heavy non-stick surface muffin pan years ago…….

I forgot to tell you why I specify that you should rub in the butter, rather than cream it with the sugar first:
It’s so hard to mix muffins sufficiently to blend without making them tough. One fine day it occurred to me that if you treated the batter like scone/biscuit/soda bread/pastry crust and rubbed in the butter first, you could cut that problem off at the pass. I’ve never looked back….I do this for banana bread, too.
By the way, in leafing through past issues of Cooks Illustrated that Dennis gave me, I saw this mentioned in a quick bread recipe.

ATTENTION MARJORIE: if you use white flour only,I would increase the flour by 1/4-1/3 cup to compensate for the extra absorbtion of the whole wheat flour. Also, this batter is substantial enough that about any tender fruit would work– I would think that they’d be great with peaches, too.–in that case, definitely going with the 1/3 cup extra flour.