Last summer, my brother-in-law brought us an entire crate of blueberries, or as Eliza likes to call them, boo boos.  When I say an entire crate, I mean a giant, took up most of my counter top, crate of blueberries.  Eliza and I spent a long morning, picking through, rinsing, bagging and eating handfuls of fresh blueberries.  I put 10 cups of fruit in each gallon baggie and I believe we ended up with 20 something bags.  We froze some, handed many out to family, and baked.  I baked everything blueberry I could think of; muffins, scones, cakes, cookies.  We had blueberries baked into every delectable for as long as I could keep them fresh.  Eventually, I made and froze a bunch more baked goods and also canned a blueberry sauce that we are still putting on ice cream and pancakes.

The warmer weather had me thinking back on our summer of blueberries and craving the blueberry muffins that we made so many of last year.  I must have tried at least four different muffin recipes before settling on these that I found in the New York Times.  We tried lemon blueberry muffins and almond blueberry muffins and muffins with streusel topping.  We even tried cream cheese stuffed muffins but this hearty, very classic, no frills, not too sweet blueberry muffin completely tops them all.  This particular batch we added a buttermilk glaze to make them feel just a little bit more special.  So Eliza and I, still in our PJ’s on a lazy Sunday morning, set out to make our favorite blueberry muffins.  They are simple, letting the blueberries be the star ingredient and call for mashing up some of the blueberries and incorporating them into the batter.  This makes them incredibly moist and uses more blueberries which, considering I still have frozen ones from last year, is much appreciated.  Try them out and you will be hooked.  In fact, I am probably going to go and eat another one.

Ingredients:

• ½ cup softened butter
• 1 ¼ cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups flour
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• ½ cup milk
• 2 cups blueberries, washed, drained and picked over
• 3 teaspoons sugar

 

For the glaze

• 2 TBS buttermilk
• 1 cup powdered sugar

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 375.
2. Cream the butter and 1 1/4 cups sugar until light.
3. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla.
4. Sift together the flour, salt and baking powder, and add to the creamed mixture alternately with the milk. (Best trick ever for not having flour flying out of your bowl.)
5. Crush 1/2 cup blueberries with a fork, and mix into the batter. Fold in the remaining whole berries.
6. Line a 12 cup standard muffin tin with cupcake liners, and fill with batter. I filled mine a little too full this time because I remembered them not fluffing up very much.  If you fill to about 3/4 full, that should be perfect.  Sprinkle the 3 teaspoons sugar over the tops of the muffins, and bake at 375 degrees for about 30-35 minutes.
7. While the muffins are baking, make your glaze by sifting the powdered sugar into a bowl and then whisking in the buttermilk.  Set it aside and stir every so often so it doesn’t set up.
8. Remove muffins from tin and cool at least 30 minutes. Once the muffins are room temperature, spoon on the glaze and let it dry.  Eat up!

*Store, uncovered, or the muffins will be too moist the second day, if they last that long.  I like to put mine in gallon baggies and leave them half open.  That seems to work great.  If you freeze them like I did last year, don’t glaze them and when you are ready to thaw, just thaw them in open air so they don’t get soggy.

Enjoy and eat up!  MEB