Saturday, July 4, 2009

Blueberry Sauce Muffins

Happy Fourth of July! There's nothing more all-American than a good blueberry muffin to start your day. Or for a mid-morning snack. Or lunch. These muffins are so good that you might just find yourself grabbing one any time you get near the kitchen.

All too often blueberry muffins are tasteless, cakey, and boring. These avoid that fate by including dried and fresh blueberries cooked into a delicious blueberry sauce and swirled into the batter. It is a recipe from Cook's Illustrated that I first saw at Obsessed With Baking. (If you haven't been to Steph's blog, click over; you'll be in for a treat!)


n.o.e.'s notes

- I didn't have any fresh blueberries on hand so I used Wyman's frozen wild blueberries. They turned the batter pretty much purple, but the muffins baked up light. Wild blueberries are critically important in blueberry baked goods, so if I can't find wild ones fresh, I use frozen. To me the big domesticated ones just don't have enough flavor when baked.

- Typical of CI, this recipe mixes the ingredients in an interesting order. The berries are added to the wet ingredients before the flour is stirred in, rather than being folded in at the end. This keeps the muffins from being over-mixed.

- I cut the sugar to 5.5 oz (instead of 8 oz). I wasn't paying attention and added the sugar with flour mixture at first then had to try to separate it out. Luckily that mishap didn't seem to harm the finished muffins.

- So often muffin recipes make only 9 or 10 muffins. I liked that this batter filled 12 muffin cups.

- I baked them at 390 for 20+ minutes.


the verdict:

This is a GOOD blueberry muffin! The swirled sauce provides a shot of blueberry goodness, and the dried blueberries really add to the flavor intensity. This is my new go-to blueberry muffin.


14 comments:

Creative Classroom Core said...

These muffins sound incredible! I think that you can never have enough good muffin recipes!

Audrey said...

They look wonderful! I haven't been to Costco since I moved back (much too crowded on the weekends!) so I haven't been able to get my big bag of Wyman's for a while. I love the pretty shape you got too..did you use an unusual pan?

Madam Chow said...

I totally agree about the wild blueberries. I find 3 pound bags of Wyman's wild blueberries at our local Costco, for an excellent price.

NKP said...

Blueberry muffins are my favourite, these look great.

mike said...

Ok - those 2 tubs of blueberries I bought this weekend are going to be put to use. These look GREAT Nancy! Thanks for making them!

Happy Fourth!

Anonymous said...

Ooh...I like the idea of using dried blueberries too. The muffins look great.

Pamela said...

My gosh, these muffins look amazing!

HanaĆ¢ said...

Your muffins look great. Blueberry muffins are one of my favorite muffins. I recently baked Blueberry Muffins from The Bread Bible and LOVED them. I only substituted the lemon zest with orange zest. You can find the recipe here, if you wish to try it sometime: http://www.realbakingwithrose.com/recipes/RLB%27s%20Blueberry%20Muffins.pdf

Unknown said...

I love how intensely blueberry the muffins look!! I had a huge bag of Wyman's in my freezer so I am going to have to try these muffins.

Katrina said...

Yum, the muffins do look great. I'm not sure I've ever even seen wild blueberries. But I'm gonna look now.

Cathy said...

Wow, a new go-to blueberry muffin! I definitely need to make these. I made the KAF blueberry muffins a couple of weeks ago, and they were fine, but nothing special. So I'm still on the hunt for the perfect blueberry muffin. I can't wait to try these!

Di said...

I remember reading the article for those muffins and thinking I'd be interested to try it, since the mixing method was different. But I don't like blueberries. =) Glad you enjoyed them so much.

Kayte said...

Well, anytime anyone finds a new go-to recipe, my fingers are busy trying to save that recipe into my file. These look absolutely wonderfully delicious. Thanks!

sara said...

oooh, these sound wonderful. I have some Wyman's in the freezer, so I guess I have to try these.