Two at a Time Baking

Erik and I had a fabulous time visiting some friends in Charlottesville over Memorial Day weekend.  On Sunday morning, I made some blueberry muffins (using this recipe).  As I looked for a place to take some photos of the muffins to add to the blog, I was surprised to find a blueberry plant sitting on their dining room table that they had not yet planted.  What a perfect backdrop for some photos of blueberry muffins!  I'm trying to improve my picture taking abilities, especially when it comes to food.  I'm still pretty bad (Erik took this one which I really like) but I'm hoping over time I'll get better.  I followed the recipe as listed and this time I actually remembered to sprinkle Sugar in the Raw on top of the muffins before baking them.  Although there was disagreement about whether there was too much or too little sugar, we all seemed to like having at least some sugar on top of the muffins.

Finally, a blueberry muffin recipe that I'm happy with. I tweaked the most recent recipe I had tried and we were quite pleased with the results. I normally like to bring all cold ingredients to room temperature before baking. Last night, however, I didn't have enough time to do that the old fashioned way so I microwaved the butter for about 7 seconds and set the eggs in a bowl of lukewarm water for about 10 minutes while I got the other ingredients ready. I used the buttermilk cold. I also creamed the butter and sugar like mad tonight. When I added the buttermilk, eggs and vanilla, I still had trouble getting everything to blend but apparently that isn't a problem. I took some pictures of the finished product but I'm not thrilled with the way they came out - definitely need to work on that. And at lunch today, I finally found out how to make a nice, crunchy topping of big chunks of sugar. Erik and I had lunch at Rue Cler, one of my new favorite spots in Durham. They have a bakery next door and had some really fine looking blueberry muffins. For research's sake, I decided to buy one and was happy to see that it had those beautiful chunks of sugar on top. The person ringing us up shared the secret: sugar in the raw. So simple and so smart! I can't wait to try it out. But for now I think I will take a break from blueberry muffins (muffins in general for that matter) and move on to seek out a reliable recipe for another category of sweet treats . . .

Blueberry Buttermilk Muffins
Makes 12 regular or 6 large muffins
(Adapted from Totally Muffins Cookbook)

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour (I prefer King Arthur's)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 1/2 cups fresh blueberries

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Grease muffin tins.
2. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy (this will take longer than you think). Add eggs, buttermilk and vanilla. Lightly beat until blended.
3. In another bowl, stir together flour, salt, baking soda, powder and nutmeg.
4. Add dry mixture to liquid mixture and stir just until flour disappears. Gently stir berries into batter.
5. Fill muffin tins to top. Bake 20-25 minutes until toothpick comes out clean.
6. Let cool 5 minutes in tins. Then turn out onto wire rack. Let cool 10 minutes and enjoy!

I'm still on a blueberry muffin kick and tried the Blueberry Buttermilk Muffin recipe from Totally Muffins Cookbook which Erik surprised me with. I was so excited when it arrived from Amazon yesterday - I could barely wait to try out a recipe. Overall they turned out quite well. The recipe only called for 2/3 cup sugar and next time I will plan to add more sugar but this was definitely the best blueberry muffin recipe that I've tried so far. I really like the buttermilk - it adds a great flavor I think. The recipe said to cream the butter (softened not melted) and sugar so I used my trusty KitchenAid electric mixer (which I could not live without). This was different from the other recipes I've tried - I've just been mixing the wet ingredients by hand. After adding the eggs, buttermilk and vanilla, the recipe called for light beating until blended. I kept beating it but it never really blended - there were chunks of butter floating in the liquid. I feel like I've encountered this phenomenon before sometime - I think when adding buttermilk to a batter for something else. Has anyone had this same issue? Any ideas about how to get around it? Maybe beat the sugar and butter longer? It didn't seem to negatively impact the final result and the top of the muffins had kind of a neat craggy texture and I wonder whether the un-blended butter/sugar could have contributed to this? I also forced myself to stop mixing the wet and dry ingredients before I normally would and I think that helped - for some strange reason, I can't seem to stop mixing muffin batter soon enough. It just seems like I need to keep going to mix in all the flour but then all of a sudden I've gone too far. I'm sure that has contributed to the rather mediocre muffins I've been turning out thus far. The same neighbor that I borrowed the eggs from earlier this week told me how much he loves blueberry muffins so I brought 4 of today's muffins over to him and his family. It makes me so happy to share my baked treats, especially when it's unexpected. They were so excited to get the muffins and commented on how professional they looked - it really made my day.

I have decided to take on a project to find the perfect recipe for several different categories of baked goods and started this blog to record my thoughts (and hopefully get some input) along the way. OK, “perfect” might overstate it but at least a very solid version of each type of baked good. Here are the categories that I’ve decided on: Bars Cake Cookies Cupcakes Muffins Pies Poundcake Scones I decided to start with muffins and it seems to me (and my husband Erik) that the best type of muffin recipe to have in the arsenal is for blueberry muffins. I’ve made a few batches using different recipes and let’s just say that the search goes on. Tonight, I tried the recipe from Molly O’Neill’s New York Cookbook (you can check it out here). I started the baking pretty late and after getting home from the grocery store to pick up a few ingredients, I realized I didn’t have any eggs. Ugh. So I went the old-fashioned route and actually called a neighbor to borrow some eggs. Who knew that would actually work! Anyway, the eggs were extra large and I usually use large but I trudged onward, not wanting to go back out to the store. Unlike the other recipes I’ve tried, this one called for the zest of one lemon and the lemon I had was pretty big. Also a bit unusual, the recipe called for plain yogurt. I wasn’t sure whether to use a glass pyrex measuring cup typically used for measuring liquid or go with the stainless steel solid measuring cup. Anyone have any ideas of which way to go for something like yogurt? (I ended up going with the pyrex version tonight.) The muffins got a bit darker on top than the other recipes I’ve tried but I think that was ultimately a good thing. I like muffins to have a nice crunch on top. At long last, the muffins came out of the oven and . . . we didn’t love them. They had a pretty decent texture and exterior crunch. But they tasted a bit bland to us. Nothing special and probably a little too much lemon for our taste. Oh well, plenty of recipes to try in the coming days . . .