Best Blueberry Muffins

Ever in the mood for a good muffin? I know I am, especially when we have guests in from out of town, and I want to be hospitable (and pretend like I know how to bake).

This is actually an extension of a little dream I have. I imagine myself someday having the whole family over for the holidays (not in this little apartment, of course), waking up earlier than everyone else on Christmas morning, and whipping up a big, special holiday breakfast.

The savory aromas would slowly wake the family, one by one, and we’d all sit around my big kitchen table, sipping coffee and enjoying eggs benedict and bacon, fresh fruit and muffins, and watching the snow fall quietly outside. Or wait, was that a Folger’s commercial?

Anyway, since it’s only September (how is it that I already have holiday fever?), and we had only one guest in town, I thought I’d live out at least a fraction of my fantasy by attempting to make “the best” blueberry muffins.

The Recipe

Best Blueberry Muffins, americastestkitchen.com

Apprehension Meter

I was feeling pretty smug about this one, I’ll admit it. Even though I’d never made homemade muffins before, my apprehension was very low. Barely even on the scale. I’ve baked things before, and really, how badly can you screw up a muffin?

In addition, recipes from America’s Test Kitchen practically come with some kind of guarantee, a cooking insurance policy of sorts. Or, at least, that’s how they make you feel, saying that their recipes “work every time.” Or something along those lines.

Here’s How It Really Went

To begin, I skipped the first steps regarding the lemon-sugar topping. I love lemons in water, on fish, in vegetable dishes and so on, but there’s just something about lemon, or even lemon flavor, in breakfast and dessert items that I just can’t stomach. So, I didn’t bother.

I skipped right along to the most fun step—simmering the sugar and blueberries to make a sort of jam to go in the muffins.

Can you imagine how good this smelled?

I’ve never cooked any kind of fruit before, but I just followed the instructions and before I knew it, I had a delicious looking and smelling concoction bubbling away on the stove (and a stained spoon).

Oops.

I moved on to sifting and whisking, mixing and folding, and soon enough I had my batter, all ready to go. The only hiccup was that I had forgotten, mid-way through the recipe, that I didn’t have any buttermilk. Lucky for me, the recipe provided a substitute for buttermilk: ¾ cup plain whole-milk or low-fat yogurt thinned with ¼ cup milk. I opted for ¾ cup of 2% milk, because that was what I had.

The batter seemed pretty thick, resembling a dough more than a batter, really. But, I thought, maybe this is just what “real” muffin batter was supposed to look and feel like. Maybe I was just too used to the Pillsbury just-add-milk variety, which always came out a little thinner.

When it came time to transfer the batter into the muffin tin, there were two things that I was hesitant about. 1. No liners? Well, okay, but how are you supposed to get the muffins out in one piece? The answer turned out to be Pam (or any kind of spray-cooking oil), and lots of it. 2. Fill the cups to the top? Really? I’m pretty sure that Pillsbury might have a thing or two to say about that (if memory serves, they usually preach the 2/3 rule), but okay, I thought, that’s what the recipe says.

So far, so good

Then here came the curveball. I had been coasting through this recipe, so self-satisfied, possibly even arrogantly, that I didn’t realize until it was too late that it’s really hard to try to insert a jam/jelly-like substance into the middle of thick muffin “dough” that’s already filled to the top of the cup.

To do this, I took a small spoonful of the blueberry mixture, and tried to press it down into the center of the muffin. Well, you can tell by the end product that my method wasn’t very successful.

This is one of those things that really irks me—following the given directions and then coming out with a different product. How did they get all of the jam into the middle of the muffin without any of the goop oozing out on top? Really, America’s Test Kitchen, I’d love to know.

Alas, let’s just say that these muffins weren’t going to win any kind of beauty contest. The boyfriend was brutally honest, but right, when, after he took his first bite, said that they really didn’t taste that great either.

They had smelled delicious when they were in the oven, so I had had high hopes, but I tried one myself, and unfortunately agreed. The muffin itself, I’m sorry to report, was incredibly dry, and severely lacked flavor. Looking back, I think that substituting regular milk for buttermilk probably wasn’t a great swap. The muffins definitely could have used a little tang, a little bite, which can usually be attributed to buttermilk.

And let’s be honest, they were just plain ugly. A little gruesome looking, if you ask me.

The Verdict

In the end, our guest insisted that the muffins were good, and after a while, I even got used to them. They were fun enough to make, and I didn’t feel buyers’ remorse on any of the ingredients; all were things I already had. Needless to say, they didn’t go to waste; we eventually finished them off. But if this experience was any indication of how my little Christmas-morning-breakfast-fantasy will one day play out, I may just quit while I’m ahead.