Buttermilk Berry Muffins

After yesterday's all day, or so it seemed, intense recipe I chose to keep things simple and go back to basics today. Muffins are pretty basic and the only way I could mess things up was if I mixed them too much! Alton Brown's words always come back to me when I make a recipe that should only be mixed by hand ten times! And those words are, " walk away, just drop the spoon and walk away!"
One of the vendors from the Saturday farmer's market loves my fresh blueberry scones and buys them every week. Last Saturday he brought me a pint of beautiful blackberries and said he thought maybe they would work in a scone recipe.
Well this morning I made and froze my usual batches of scones for the upcoming weekend and decided to try a few with the blackberries. I kept one out and test baked it and it really came out fine..so it looks like a certain vendor will be eating blackberry scones this Saturday!

So on to today's post. These muffins come from a wonderful site, " joyofbaking". I love reading the recipes on this site, and there are so many!
Since I had to use the rest of the blackberries up before they went bad, I decided to put them into this muffin recipe, along with a handful of blueberries I had left over. I also chose this one because I had a quart of buttermilk in the fridge still unopened and I wanted to use some of that, too.
The muffins are moist and full of flavor from lots of lemon zest and they're not too sweet. Perfect with the fresh berries and so easy to make. Just the usual wet and dry ingredients gently mixed together, then baked. I made 6 jumbo muffins rather than 12 regular sized and I wound up with more batter than I needed so I made 2 extra regular sized. Must have been those huge blackberries taking up so much room!


Start by combining the dry ingredients and the zest in one bowl and whisking the wet ingredients in another bowl.

Add the berries to the dry and gently fold them in.

Now here comes the important part... using a rubber spatula, fold the wet into the dry and mix only til just combined! Then..yes..you know..stop mixing! You should still see flour and that's okay. Don't overmix!

Scoop the batter into your prepared muffin cups. ( I guess I could have put more into each cup and been fine but I wound up with extra batter and I made 2 regular size muffins with the extra). The recipe says to fill each almost full.

Then bake about 20 minutes or til a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Buttermilk Berry Muffins ( from "joyofbaking" site)


Makes 12 regular or 6 jumbo muffins

2 1/2 cups AP flour

3/4 cup sugar

2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

Zest of whole lemon or orange

1 large egg, lightly beaten

3/4 cup buttermilk

2/3 cup safflower or canola oil ( I used canola)

1 tsp. vanilla

1 1/2 - 2 cups fresh or frozen berries, (blueberries, raspberries or blackberries)

Preheat oven to 375. Position rack to middle. Spray muffin cups or place liners in each.

1. Whisk the egg, buttermilk, oil and vanilla in a medium bowl.

2. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and zest.

3. Gently fold the berries into the dry ingredients.

4. With a rubber spatula, fold the wet ingredients into the dry and stir only til just combined. Don't overmix!

5. Fill each cup to almost full and bake about 20 minutes, or til tester comes out clean.

6. Cool 5 minutes in pan, then remove and cool completely on wire rack. Dust with confectioner's sugar if desired.