Wild Blueberry Muffins

I was up in Maine this past weekend with my family - and it is wild blueberry season up there! They are everywhere - farm stands, bakeries, grocery stores, in candy, ice cream, drinks - blueberry everything. I took a quart of wild blueberries home with me - thanks to my mom and mother-in-law for holding all the blueberries on their lap in the back of the car during the 9-hour drive home!

I had been wanting to try Cook's Illustrated Blueberry Scones - I saw some photos on the blog Eat.Drink.Think and they looked great, but I didn't have all the ingredients and I just didn't have the energy to go out to get them. So, I fell back on blueberry muffins. I decided to make the ones in my MS Baking Handbook. They came out really good - check out my tips at the bottom of the recipe which I think will make them even better.

Blueberry Muffins (recipe: MS Baking Handbook)

Ingredients:

1 stick unsalted butter @ room temperature, plus more for pan

2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for pan

1.5 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups fresh blueberries (I used wild blueberries)

1 cup sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla (I use pure vanilla from Trader Joe's)

1/2 cup milk (I used skim milk to reduce fat content)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Butter and flour (generously) a standard 12-cup muffin pan. Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. Toss blueberries in a separate bowl with ~1.5 teaspoons of the flour mixture to lightly coat (this will help blueberries not to sink in the batter).

In a 2nd bowl, use electric mixer (recipe calls for stand mixer with paddle attachment, but I used a hand mixer) to beat butter and sugar on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until combined. Mix in vanilla.

Add flour mixture to butter mixture on low speed, until just combined - do not overmix. Add milk and beat until just combined. Again, do not overmix. Fold in blueberries. Divide batter evenly among 12 muffin cups. Bake for approximately 30 minutes or until the muffins are golden brown and a cake tester comes out clean from center. Cool pan on wire rack for 10 minutes. Turn muffins on their sides after 10 minutes and let cool.

Tips:

• Make sure you really butter and flour the pan - I did mine generously and the muffins still were diffiult to get out of the pan without tearing the tops off.
• The recipe suggests sprinkling a small amout of granulated sugar on the top of each muffin before baking - definitely do this! It makes the tops a bit crunchy and sweet.
• I used skim milk instead of whole milk and they turned out fine and saved calories :)
• If I was going to use wild blueberries again, I might use a bit more since they are a bit smaller than regular blueberries.
• You may be able to use frozen and thawed blueberries for this recipe, but I would make sure they were whole berries and that they were very dry - wet berries will throw off the recipe.