Meg’s Blueberry Muffins

The thing I love most about summer is the arrival of the summer fruits. I look forward to this with even more anticipation than the release of my children from school and the gift of long glorious days of unstructured time stretching out in front of us. The ripe juicy peaches and nectarines, which I eat voraciously. The really wonderful ones have to be eaten outside, or over a sink, to catch all the rivulets of that run down the arm and drip off the elbow. The wild blackberries, plucked from the roadside bushes, sweet and tender, still warm from the sun. The cherries. The ten pound flats of plump, taut organic blueberries I buy from Kate when her truck rolls in off the ferry. I have to confess, I never buy just one flat. She only comes once a week and the blueberry season is only a month and a half long. If I'm lucky. I buy three flats each week, four if we have company. And we have a huge enormous bowl out on the table. We toss fistfuls of blueberries into our mouths like popcorn. I refill the bowl several times a day. I'm like "mother bear" in the children's book, Blueberries for Sal, written by Robert McClouskey. "Eat all you-" gulp, "can possibly hold!" swallow. "eat lots of berries and grow big and fat. We must store up food for the long, cold winter." And we do. Then, so that I have the memories and the tastes of summer in the grey winter months, I freeze huge plastic freezer bags of Kate's blueberries. And all winter long, I bring great sackfuls out and we eat frozen blueberries in a cup. I make a blueberry compote that I pour over sponge cake, and dollop big spoonfuls of freshly whipped cream on top. You also can use the compote to put inside crepes, and yes, whipped cream goes well with that as well. Sometimes I add raspberries, strawberries and/or blackberries to the compote. It depends on my mood and what I have in the freezer. I shall share these recipes with you, but not today. Today I'm going to give you my Blueberry Muffin recipe. I made it up. Hope you like it.

Meg's Blueberry Muffins

-Heat oven to 375 degrees. Grease 12 cup muffin tin or place cupcake liners in the muffin tin instead. Place 1/4 cup of butter in a mixing bowl and chop the butter into pieces. Put the plug in the sink and fill the sink with around an inch of hot water. Place the mixing bowl with the butter in the sink so the warm water will soften the butter and when it comes time for mixing, your arms won't get so tired. (Do not sneak use margarine or oil. It doesn't taste nearly as good!)

In separate bowl mix
1 ½ cup flour
(I like organic flour the best. But organic is more expensive and unbleached regular flour is fine too)
1/4 teaspoon of salt
2 teaspoons of baking powder.

Set flour mixture bowl aside.
-When butter is soft, remove from sink and add:

½ to 3/4 a cup of white granulated sugar
(depending on how tart your berries are)

Blend well with butter. Then add to butter mixture:

1 large egg
2/3 cup milk
½ teaspoon of pure vanilla (don't use imitation vanilla, please.)

Add the butter etc. mixture to the flour mixture. Do not over beat. Just turn with fork until moistened. Now add several large handfuls of:

frozen blueberries

Stir in. Add more as needed. I love lots of berries, but some of you might prefer less. I leave it up to the individual. Spoon muffin batter into muffin tin and place in heated oven. Bake until golden brown on top. Give it 25-35 minutes. It all depends on your oven, and how many fistfuls of frozen blueberries you used. The more blueberries, the longer it takes. If you're using fresh blueberries then it won't take as much time to cook as the frozen ones. You can test to see if the muffins are done by either pressing lightly on the top of a muffin with your fingers. If it is done, the muffin will spring back into place. Or you could use a straw, a thin wood skewer, or jab a fork in one. If the implement comes out clean, (berry juice doesn't count, just no dough) then the muffins are done.

Take out of the oven, serve hot with a nice slab of fresh butter. If your family doesn't eat all of them at breakfast, don't worry. These muffins taste good cold too. Leave them out on the table and you can be certain that by lunchtime, they'll all be gone!

And don't worry. If you don't have access to a Kate with a truck full of berries, no problem. Any grocery store worth their salt will have bags of frozen organic blueberries in their frozen food section.

Posted by Meg Tilly on Monday, September 03, 2007 in Recipes

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