Ode to Joy, add blueberries

In my mind, there is a perfect blueberry muffin, but it's hard to find.

It should have lots of inky blueberries surrounded by muffin matter (quick bread), a butter-tinged color, with overtones of vanilla, and a muffin top distinguished by firm texture and symmetry of shape.

In fact I recently went on a scavenger hunt  in my neighborhood, sampling commercially baked muffins from coffee shops and groceries stores. Yes, there is a "best" muffin in my neighborhood (available at Tom Thumb groceries) and it's almost perfect, but I wondered if I could do better at home.



Enter the Joy of Cooking, 1997 version.

If you own any version of Joy, you know what to expect -- the preliminary tutorial "About Muffins" and sure enough, it's right here on page 782. Did you know-- "Most muffin batters can be mixed, spooned into the pan, and refrigerated overnight to be baked in the morning." Actually, I didn't know that, but I'll try it next time.


Of course I love fresh berries but I wondered if that inky starburst I was hoping to achieve might workout better if I used frozen. I decided to try both and see if it made a difference.

Here they both are, side by side. The frozen berries on the left are supposedly "wild," labeled organic, from Canada; alongside farmed and conventional, from Watsonville, California.

Now for the fat.

Usually I make do with 2% milk when I bake, but I wanted to give these muffins a fighting chance against the commercial version, so I made an extra trip to the store for 4% milk. As you can see in the recipe (below) cream is also an option, but if that's really the secret to a better tasting muffin, then I'll have to live without it.

Anyway I had a sneaking suspicion that it's really all about butter, and now that I've baked and tasted, I'm pretty sure that's true. The recipe calls for either UNsalted butter or vegetable oil. I didn't have unsalted butter on hand so I used oil, and after all that, the end result could have used more salt.

With fresh berries

With frozen berries

Here we observe the berries after the folding process. The fresh berries hold their shape and remain photogenic, the frozen berries leak a little juice, which darkens the batter, but I don't hold that against them. It could work out really well.



A few more words of wisdom from Rombauer et al.: "...you can fill the (muffin cups) to the rim or even heap thick batter above the rim for giant muffins." In our super-sized world,  it's possible to get giant muffin tins for our super-sized lives, but I don't own those (yet). So I filled the standard-size cups as full as I could and hoped for the best tops 400 degrees could coax out of them.

And here are the results:

Fresh berries on the left, frozen on the right

They won't win any symmetry designs for muffin tops (especially the strange formation at three o'clock). But they look appetizing enough to get my hopes up.

Fresh berries left, frozen right

 Cross sections. The frozen berries remain less photogenic but regarding taste? Both versions were identical. So just use whichever you prefer.


Are these the muffins of my dream? As I said, the recipe needed a little more salt, and butter is the key. 

Variation: I mixed a second batch with whole wheat pastry flour, left out the suggested nutmeg, threw in all the leftover berries, and half the sugar. This time I greased the pans with butter for an extra lift. And this time, the result was fantastic! A peak muffin experience! 

(Except for the strange formations on the tops.)

Below is the recipe for Basic Muffins. Add 1 1/2 cups blueberries.