Exceedingly Mundane

For those of you who visit my Project365 photoblog, you know that I went to the Farmer’s Market on Saturday with my sister Gail. One of the things I picked up was a pint of fresh locally grown blueberries. I asked Tim this morning what he wanted me to make him with the blueberries. As per usual, he said it didn’t matter, for me to pick. Not feeling very decisive, I persisted and gave him several choices – blueberry coffeecake, blueberry bread, blueberry cobbler, blueberry muffins, etc and he picked muffins.

I looked through several cookbooks I have here and also cruised my favorite recipe site, AllRecipes.com, before finally deciding to use this recipe, along with a lot of the comments that I read through. The recipe I ended up making was not all that much like the original, but the result was really good!

I used my red silicone muffin pan, and that was a mistake – the batter is heavy and the muffins spread, so with the flimsy silicone, they really oozed out all over the pan! (Photo here). They taste really good, though, and that’s all that matters. We each had one, hot out of the oven, with some butter melted on it, and they were delicious. I asked Tim to rate them on a scale of 1 to 10 and he gave them (hot out of the oven), a 10. We’ll see how they taste tomorrow warmed back up!

The recipe is here, over at Hambones. I’ll also post it below. These are NOT low-fat, but I did make a few changes so they weren’t quite as bad as the original. I would have liked to have tried them with some whole wheat flour for half the white flour, some Splenda for the sugar, and other substitutions. But, when I had asked Tim if he wanted “low fat or full fat?” – he answered, “full fat”. Shhh, don’t tell him I used a couple of low-fat substitutions in this recipe 😀

The recipe is on the extended page, so click there if you’re so inclined!

Blueberry Muffins

Ingredients:
2 eggs
1 cup white sugar (used white & brown; see notes)
1/2 cup vegetable oil (used light stick butter; see notes)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (used more)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda (also used powder; see notes)
1 cup sour cream (used 1/2 yogurt; see notes)
1 cup blueberries (used more)
cinnamon, nutmeg (see notes)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Grease 12 muffin cups or line with paper muffin liners.

In large bowl beat eggs, gradually add sugar while beating. Continue beating while slowly pouring in oil. Stir in vanilla. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, salt and baking soda.

Stir dry ingredients into egg mixture alternately with sour cream. Gently fold in blueberries. Scoop batter into prepared muffin cups.

Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes.

Stacy’s Notes – Original recipe above is from AllRecipes.com, but I made a LOT of changes (based on comments at the AllRecipes site). I halved the original recipe (measurements above reflect that), and I used 1/2 cup white sugar and 1/2 cup brown sugar. Instead of using 1/2 cup of vegetable oil, I used 1 stick (1/2 cup) of light butter, softened. Next time, melt it first so it incorporates better into the batter. I used 2 teaspoons imitation vanilla extract (if using the real stuff, would use less). I used 1/2 cup light sour cream and 1/2 cup plain nonfat yogurt for the full cup of sour cream.

I also used 1 heaping teaspoon of cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg and added these to the flour mixture. In addition to the 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda, I also added a 1/2 teaspoon of baking power to the dry mixture. I also used a handful more berries, after I measured out a heaping 1 cup.

I mixed the eggs, sugars, butter, vanilla, sour cream and yogurt in my Kitchenaid mixture, then very carefully folded in the flour mixture. Be careful not to over-stir the batter. I rinsed the berries, dried them, and tossed them with a bit of the flour mixture before incorporating them into the batter.

I baked in my red silicone muffin pan at 375 for about 24 minutes. The batter is heavy and spread in my silicone, so don’t use that next time – be sure to use a regular muffin pan. (I lowered the oven temp because I usually do that with my silicone pans). These were really good, a definite keeper.