Have you seen the muffin man?

 

 

Cooking takes me down rocky roads.  I am now officially into muffins.  I think they would be a good food truck offering, calling the business Muffin Man.  It is, however, falling on deaf ears around here and all they want to do is to eat the muffins right out of the oven with big glasses of milk.  That is not good business, just good eating. (I have never had a glass of milk in my life.  Once they took my bottle away, I refused to drink milk in any form.  My parents had to do it, I was drawing attention carrying a bottle around at my age and their parenting skills were being called into question.)
 Today's special: blueberry muffins with fat juicy fruit popping up all over (and in) these plump delights.  You can have your mixes, this is simply better even though it takes a few minutes more.  Assemble your ingredients the night before so everything is room temperature, except the milk. It makes the job less onerous. I use big muffin tins and the pan's cups that are empty, I put in some water in each while the batter is baking.  That way it won't burn up the pan in spots where there is no batter. I have nine large muffins from this recipe, so I had to put a little water in three of the empty spots to bake.  I know you have heard that hint about not baking cupcake pans with empty slots, but it is worth repeating.

 I viewed several recipes for blueberry muffins and they all had about the same ingredients.  Some had no vanilla and I can't bake without it, so I added it.  I had one blueberry yogurt left in the frig and I added that to the basic batter and look what happened.  The muffins are large, moist, and delicious.  After 10 minutes in the oven, sprinkle on the mixture of brown sugar and cinnamon and bake for another 10 or so minutes depending on your oven's penchant.

Basic recipe: no mixer required

Stir together: 2 cups flour, 2 tablespoons baking powder and 1/2 cup sugar and set aside.

In a big bowl place a stick of room temperature butter, 1 slightly beaten egg, 3/4 cup of milk. (I also added a blueberry yogurt, but you don't have to.  I think, also, a spoon of sour cream to take the place of the yogurt, would work too, I'll try that tomorrow.) Add one teaspoon vanilla. Take a tablespoon of flour and shake the berries in it so they won't all fall to the base of the cupcake pan when baking.  With a wooden spoon stir in the flour mixture into the wet mixture until everything is mixed but not beaten.  Add the blueberries, be generous, and bake at 350 for ten minutes.  After ten minutes top the muffins with a mixture of brown sugar and cinnamon and pop them back in for another ten minutes or so, depending on your oven.

Tomorrow I am going to double the recipe and try the sour cream.  I'll let you know what happens.

First picture~

Could not wait for tomorrow. Matt bought great fresh strawberries and blueberries at Kroger after my mornings blueberry muffin marathon. I had to make these fresh fruit muffins to surprise the hard working Andy when he gets home today. (I tried buttermilk instead of regular milk in this set.) I remember now, after baking fresh strawberries in baked goods that I don't care for the texture of that particular berry in a muffin.)  It gets soft and squishy and lends little or no taste to the batter. The color also fades and it's just not to my liking.  I'll stick to shortcake for strawberries which we adore, but muffins and crumbles do very well with the sturdy, plump blueberry.