Showing the Love with Blueberry Muffins

Show your love and bake some Blueberry Muffins.

I know it’s a bit “old-school” to show your love by baking.

But, I get a lot of satisfaction from having my kids walk in the door from school and exclaim, “Yum! What’s that smell?”

This week’s treat was warm blueberry muffins.

Eating one of these after a cold, rainy walk from the bus is like putting on freshly dried and still warm flannel PJs before bed. Cozy!

I found inspiration for this recipe from two cookbooks and from my glorious stash of frozen blueberries picked last summer.

From Portland’s Palate gave me a lead on the ingredients, though I made several adjustments.

How to Cook Everything, Completely Revised 10th Anniversary Edition: 2,000 Simple Recipes for Great Foodchanged my method.

When the urge to bake strikes, I’m always bummed if a recipe calls for room temperature butter. Who wants to wait?

He couldn't even wait to take the liner off!

In following How to Cook Everything’s fruit and nut bread method, I simply take refrigerated butter and throw it in a food processor with the flour and sugar.

It works like a charm for muffins as well.

Ingredients List

Makes 10-12 muffins

• 1/4 cup butter, refrigerated
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2/3 cup whole-wheat flour
• 2/3 cup cup all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup low-fat milk
• 1/2 cup low-fat, vanilla yogurt
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup frozen blueberries (fresh is great too and may reduce your baking time)

Method

Preheat oven to 350ºF.

Insert paper liners into one standard, 12-hole muffin pan or lightly grease muffin pan.

In a food processor, combine butter, flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt.

In a large, separate bowl, stir together the egg, milk, yogurt and vanilla.

Add in the flour mixture to the bowl and stir until ingredients are moist.

Gently fold in the blueberries.

Spoon the batter into muffin cups (about 2/3 full) and bake for 20-30 minutes (20 for fresh blueberries and usually 30 for frozen).

The muffins are ready when they are golden on top and spring back when lightly pressed with your finger.

Allow the muffins to cool in the pan on a wire rack for 5 minutes. Then run a dinner knife around the edges and lift the muffins out of the pan.

Note: We always eat them while they are still warm. Sometimes this lack of restraint causes them to stick to paper muffin liners. So if you are like us, then use the foil liners or no liner.