Blueberry Lemon Muffins

I bought four more cookbooks this weekend. But wait, these are really good ones! Oh, the others?...yea they're good, too. But isn't there always one special book out of the pile that seems to have it all? This time it's the book, "Top Secret Restaurant Recipes" by Todd Wilbur. You've heard of him, right? He's the guy who clones all the top recipes from restaurants and coffee houses. He's even cloned the Twinkie...and Starbuck's Cranberry Bliss Bar.

He's really a funny guy and his books are just really fun to read. The stories before each recipe are not only fun fact filled ( try saying that 3 times!), but he interjects his humor into each.

So what does that have to do with a blueberry muffin? Glad you asked! I noticed he had a recent article pertaining to a certain blueberry muffin mix that contained...no real blueberries! Wow, big surprise. But his real gripe was the fact that the photo on the front of the box shows real blueberries, when, in fact, the mix contains none. He calls it deceptive advertising, which I agree. And that...finally brings me to why this post is on blueberry muffins. His article got me to thinking how darn easy to make your own...and they taste a whole lot better!

This recipe is created from here and there with my spin on it by adding a lemon glaze and some lemon zest in the batter. I tried to show an easy and fairly basic recipe. I had a bag of frozen mixed berries, rather than all blueberries but I just picked out all the blues and had to add a few other berries to make up the cup amount but they came out great. Nice and light and with a great lemony flavor that goes so well with blueberries.

So, the next time you want to make your family blueberry muffins...I say, give 'em real berries and save the fake stuff for...oh, I don't know...maybe potpourri!

The easy thing about making muffins is that you combine the dry with the wet, mix the two together and bake.

So, having said that, combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Using a large bowl allows you more room to mix the batter.

In a glass measuring cup, combine the oil, egg and milk to reach a one cup amount.

Make a well in the center of the dry and add the wet.

Then mix just enough to combine the wet and dry and gently fold in the berries.

Scoop batter using a large cookie scoop...

And fill the muffin cups 2/3 the way full. (I ran out of regular size muffin liners but they came right out).

Bake 20 to 25 minutes.

While they're cooling, make the glaze but simply putting 1/4 cup confectioners' sugar into a small bowl and adding enough lemon juice to make a thin consistency.

Then, while the muffins are still slightly warm, drizzle the glaze over the top of each.

The glaze will kind of disappear but the flavor remains!

Blueberry Lemon Muffins

Makes about 9 regular size muffins

1 1/2 cups AP flour

3/4 cup sugar ( I would cut this down to 1/2 cup next time..but I think everything is too sweet)

1/4 tsp. salt

2 tsp. baking powder

1/3 cup vegetable oil ( I used canola)

1 tsp. lemon zest

1 egg, slightly beaten

1/3 cup milk

1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries

Glaze:

1/4 cup confectioners' sugar

lemon juice, enough to make a thin glaze

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Preheat oven to 400. Using a regular muffin pan, place liners in cups or spray each cup with a vegetable oil spray.

1. In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, salt and baking powder.

2. Place oil, egg and lemon zest into a glass measuring cup, then add the milk to make a full cup amount.

3. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and add the wet mixture, mixing just til barely combined.

4. Fold in the berries, then scoop the batter into the cups, filling 2/3 full.

5. Bake 20 to 25 minutes, or til toothpick inserted comes out clean.

6. Cool about 5 minutes in pan, then transfer to a wire rack and drizzle glaze on top of each.

Glaze:

Mix confectioners' sugar with enough fresh lemon juice to make a thin consistency glaze.

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.

Blueberry Buttermilk Muffins Streusel Topping

I was on another quest recently. This time for muffins and this blueberry muffin recipe is really great! It was moist and full of flavor and you really should try it! I got the cookbook out of the library but also found it on another blog site. It was from Carole Walter's book " Great Coffee Cakes, Sticky Buns, Muffins & More". I halved the recipe as I usually do if I am testing it out. And I used a bigger and more shallow muffin pan so I would have more room for the topping. Happy Baking!!