Cuisine: American
Inspiration: B and I pack our lunches every day for work, and we we always include some fruit. I love buying whatever is in season at the time, and lately I’ve been buying blueberries. We bought a big container at the store last week, and then over the weekend we visited B’s parents and picked a whole bag full of fresh blueberries from their blueberry tree. That left us with a lot of blueberries, meaning it was time to look for recipes! There isn’t even a comparison in taste and quality between the freshly picked blueberries and the store-bought, so I used the store-bought for these muffins. The fresh blueberries were so good that I couldn’t bare to use them for anything other than eating by the handful.
What we Loved: There were three things about these muffins that I really loved. First, they’re definitely not lacking in blueberries. Adding a cup of blueberries to the batter and a spoonful of blueberry filling to each muffin provided blueberry flavor in every bite, which was delicious. Secondly, I really loved the flavor of the muffin itself. It was light and airy, with a subtle but great sweet flavor, almost like a vanilla cupcake. I think that I could eat one of these muffins without the blueberries and still thoroughly enjoy it. And lastly, I really loved that these muffins weren’t full of fat and sugar, as a lot of muffin recipes can be. These only used 3 tablespoons of canola oil and 1/2 cup of sugar.
Helpful Hints: I didn’t have any blueberry jam to add to the center of the muffins before baking, so instead I used another idea that I saw and added a cup of blueberries and a teaspoon of sugar to a pan and heated until a thick syrup formed. As you can see from the picture below, this syrup infused itself into the muffins rather than sitting in the center as a filling, but it was a good alternative if you don’t have any jam. It did give the muffins a really moist texture, so if you have an aversion to that, I would definitely recommend using the jam or leaving both out completely. I also decided not to use a streusel topping as was written in the original recipe, simply to save some calories and sugar. That was painful, because I love streusel so much, and I know it would have went wonderfully with these muffins.
Other Muffin Recipes: pumpkin cream cheese muffins
Blueberry Muffins
Source for the muffins: For the Love of Cooking
Source for the blueberry filling: The Bitten Word, originally from Cooks Illustrated
I only made a few changes to the muffin recipe, omitting the streusel topping and making the blueberry filling that I saw over at The Bitten Word instead of using jam. Here’s the recipe as I made it.
2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup sugar, plus 1 teaspoon
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups 0% Greek yogurt
3 tablespoons canola oil
2 cups blueberries, divided
1. Preheat the oven to 375, and grease a 12 cup muffin tray.
2. Add one cup of blueberries and 1 teaspoon of sugar to a small saucepan. Heat over medium heat for approximately 10 minutes, stirring and mashing the blueberries often until a thick paste forms. Remove from the heat, and let cool for 15 minutes.
3. Stir together the flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder. In another bowl, combine the 1/2 cup sugar, vanilla, eggs, yogurt, and oil. Slowly add the flour mixture to the egg mixture, stirring until just barely blended. Do not over mix. Gently fold in the remaining cup of blueberries.
4. Fill each muffin cup halfway full with batter. Top each cup of batter with a spoonful of the blueberry filling, then fill with the remaining muffin batter.
5. Bake for approximately 15 minutes, until the tops of the muffins are brown and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Allow the muffins to cool slightly in the pan, then remove them and serve.
