Monday's Menu

We eat a lot of muffins. They are a quick and easy breakfast option that I can throw in the oven and shower while they bake. 

They are portable. They are serving sized already. And there are a LOT of options for kinds.

One that my mom made frequently when I was younger was blueberry muffins. She didn't do much from scratch so they were always those little packet things that you add milk and an egg to. They always had the little blueberry flecks in them. I now know that those packets usually don't have anything blueberry in them except for some artificial flavoring. And that those little flecks, if they are fruit at all, are usually artificially colored dried apples when they aren't some other artificial thing.

A few times she bought the kind of mix that comes in a box with a little tin of blueberries in it. Of course, those were more expensive but they did actually have real fruit in them however pitiful it might have been. And none of us really knew how deceptive food manufacturing really is so we all just thought that was what a blueberry muffin was supposed to be like.

Imagine how frustrated I was then when I tried making my own from scratch. I discovered I didn't really like them much because the blueberries would get hot and burst while baking. That essentially meant that each muffin was pockmarked with spots of wet, blue bread.

Wet bread makes me gag. I'm fighting the urge right now just typing about it.

No recipe I tried helped. They all did that. I decided I must not really like blueberry muffins if that was how they turned out. 

I stumbled across a tip that I was able to use later though. You simply have to chop a few up and leave them on the cutting board to 'dry' for a while. 

That seemed to work better but it kind of killed my "easy, quick breakfast" vibe. 

A couple of years ago, I came across this recipe. Since all my blueberries are the frozen variety now, I can't say for sure that it is the recipe but we all love them (well, those of us who will eat blueberry anything love them).

I have no idea who the 'famous department store' is and was unaware that any department store made muffins. I have a vague memory of a candy counter (that also had soft drinks and such) in our Sears when I was little but that disappeared before my teens.

Nonetheless, these are pretty darn good and no soggy spots to be found. Works for me. :)

original recipe here

Famous Department Store Blueberry Muffins

• 8 tablespoons butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 1/2 cups blueberries
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar, for topping

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Lightly grease a standard 12-cup muffin tin; or line the tin with papers, and grease the papers.

2. In a medium-sized bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until well combined.

3. Add the eggs one at a time, scraping the sides and bottom of the bowl and beating well after each addition.

4. Beat in the baking powder, salt, and vanilla.

5. Add the flour alternately with the milk, beating gently just to combine. Scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl.

6. Mash 1/2 cup of the blueberries. Add the mashed and whole berries to the batter, stirring just to combine and distribute.

7. Scoop the batter by the heaping 1/4-cupful into the prepared muffin pan; a muffin scoop works well here.

8. Sprinkle about 1 teaspoon granulated sugar atop each muffin.

9. Bake the muffins for about 30 minutes, until they're light golden brown on top, and a toothpick inserted into the middle of one of the center muffins comes out clean.

10. Remove the muffins from the oven, loosen their edges from the pan, and after about 5 minutes transfer them to a rack to cool.