Blueberry Muffins

Yes, blueberry muffins.  Yes, again. Over the last year and a half, I've made more blueberry muffins than a bakery, and each time I try out a different recipe.  Now, plenty of the recipes I've tried have been absolutely delicious if you ask me, but I'll tell you something: my mom is a blueberry muffin fiend.  Not only does she love every one, but she is on the constant search for the perfect recipe.  She compares every muffin to the ones she used to get at DiBurro's in Seabrook, NH (unfortunately DiBurro's is no longer so I can't go beg them for their recipe).  They used to make, as she says, "moist, gummy, not-buttery-tasting, not overly-sweet, no sugar on top, beautiful-looking blueberry muffins."  I know - if you ask me, that doesn't sound so great either.  But she is totally obsessed with these muffins from the past; she recalls fondly how Dad used to drive up there every morning they were at the beach and pick up a bag of muffins for her.  So she constantly pins a million different blueberry muffin recipes and makes me try them out any time we have berries in the fridge - and there are a lot of recipes we have yet to try.  And thus, here we go again with blueberry muffins, take 7.

One thing that was different about the preparation of this recipe was the fact that you beat the sugar with the eggs.  I'm used to beating sugar with butter (my favorite smell), but never the eggs.  It makes a thick yellow paste, and then you add the rest of the wet ingredients to that.  I'm dorky enough that this was very interesting to me.  Other than that, they are fairly normal when it comes to the baking: folding in the dry ingredients, sprinkling the berries with flour so they don't all sink to the bottom, etcetera.

The end result was a delicious little muffin that Mom loved, but still not the elusive DiBurro's muffin of her dreams.  I think they were pretty similar to the other recipes I've made.  I will say this, though: these muffins are best eaten the day you bake them.  Luckily we ate most of them the night I baked them, but I brought one to work the next day and it was a weird mixture of stale and gummy.  Weirdly, my family still liked them but the texture was too weird for me.  Now maybe it was because it was during that weird heat wave of 90-degree temperatures in September, but nevertheless, I'd recommend scarfing them down quickly!

Recipe:

blueberry muffins
from Chris Little
makes 16 muffins

Ingredients:
2 eggs
1 cup sugar, plus more for sprinkling
3 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 pint blueberries, rinsed and picked over
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)

Instructions:

1) Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Grease 16 cups in 2 muffin pans.  In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the eggs and sugar until they are combined and thickened.  Add the milk and butter and beat well to just mix.  Stir in vanilla.

2) Set aside 2 tablespoons of the flour to mix with blueberries.  Then add the remaining flour, baking powder, and salt to the batter and beat well to just mix.

3) Sprinkle the blueberries with the flour and add them to the batter; if using nuts, add them here, folding them in with a rubber spatula.

4) Divide the batter among the 16 muffin cups and sprinkle the tops with sugar.  Transfer the pans to the oven and bake for 25 minutes, or until they are puffed and golden.  Leave them in the pans to cool slightly, then turn them out onto a rack to continue cooling.