The Cook’s Tour
This is a very special recipe. I’ve been baking variations of it for more than 35 years!
It’s the “mother muffin” of the DruryLane™ Collection, and the flagship of my complimentary baked goods for my new, experiential bed & breakfast at The Epic WPB.
WARNING TO EXPERIENCED BAKERS
This recipe may be dangerous to your preconceptions, and rote customs. I’ll explain the “whys,” as I go. If you can’t think a bit outside of the box, stick to your tried-and-true. This one is NOT for you.
A Long Time Ago, In a Kitchen Far, Far Away…
One of the first things that I began baking, for friends, in the mid-1980’s, was a blueberry muffin recipe, found in Bernard Clayton’s Complete Book of Breads (Read my review of this great book!). It was a killer for brunch invites.
Clayton includes a story about the origins of the recipe. I remember reading that it originated at some inn on Mackinac (Pronounce: Mack-en-awe) Island, Michigan.
The DruryLane™ Secret
My rebuild of it, about a decade ago, was the birth of my DruryLane™ muffin collection.
You want PHENOMENAL muffins?
Read the Drurylane article, before baking.
You’ll experience a 110% difference in how your muffins turn out. It is worth the short read to get big texture, and super moist crumb, in all of your muffins!
The Magic of Metric Muffin Measuring
WEIGH your ingredients!! Use a scale!
Spoons and cups are almost always mis-measured. For my friends in the United States, Myanmar and Liberia, trapped in the goofy “what’s a 1/4 of a 1/3” world of the Imperial system, metric measures, in base 10 math, are FAR EASIER, and make more sense. Once you get to understand that all ingredients are put in by WEIGHT, your ability to improvise improves!
Zesty!
Mrs. McIntyre’s muffin is small, and relies more on the fresh summer blueberries to carry it. The muffin itself, is very bland.
For more lemon pop, I decided to zest in a fresh lemon peel, BOTH in the batter, and the sugar topping.
Both oils, and sugar, “carry” flavor. They extend the molecules of essential oils from things like the oils in fruit peels, broadening the flavor, and aroma, in the finished foods that they’re in.
A lemon sugar top is great! The finely grated zest and the sugar telegraph good things!
I finish off that feeling with zesting the lemon into the expeller-pressed canola oil, in The Wet mix, to let the lemon oils and vegetable oil fuse, to infuse the whole thing with a light lemony lusciousness!
Mature: Fresh & Sweet Blueberries
As good fresh blueberries as you can find, make a difference. Where you can’t? I have a secret.
Curse of the Muffin Man
DO NOT USE frozen blueberries! They will kill this muffin. The Muffin Man will haunt your kitchen.
Frozen blueberries have already lost their skin integrity from their processing. They’ll bleed, and mush up the mix.
Best Picked Fresh
If you are lucky enough to live in a place where you can pluck fresh blueberries, at their sweetest, off of the vine, use them! That is your best bake.
For the other 95% of us, in the world?
Supermarket Sourballs
The half-ripe, medium-to-low sugar sourballs that they ship to many supermarkets will also kill these muffins, if you use them straight out of the carton. High citric acidity. Watery.
There’s a great trick, and a quick/dirty trick to making these more like the off-the-vine beauties.
Best Trick: Father Time
Let your blueberries SIT, a few days. When they soften, as water sweats out of them, the natural sugars intensify, and the acids diminish.
These consistently make my BEST muffins because the saggier skin tends to expand, without the blueberry exploding. A bit lighter, too, they don’t all sink to the bottom.
It makes for the prettiest ones inside.
The Dirty Trick
Add another 20 grams of sugar into your mix.
I really don’t like this option much. The berries, very tight, tend to explode, and unleash a wave of sour into the muffin. The sugar offsets a bit, but it’s a dirty trick, reserved for dire emergencies.
What Oil Matters
Use expeller-pressed canola oil or avocado oil, both of which are flavor neutral, and are not going to burn, and go toxic, in your muffins. The links explain why this matters A LOT.
The Stats
The Preheat
Preheat the oven to 190°c / 375°F
The Gear
2 high-sided mixing bowls, 2L/ 2.5qt, and 3.L / 3.5Qt
Soft spatula
2 glass mini prep bowls
1 Litre / 4 cup Pyrex measuring cup, or bowl with pour spout
Spoons for transferring raw ingredients;
2 oz. ladle
Mini cheesecake pan, or muffin pan (12 slot)
Tulip muffin cups for each spot on the pan (12-16)
The Stuff
We divide the stuff in the recipe into wet, dry, and fruit. If you’ve read my DruryLane™ muffin technique, then you know why this is so important to getting great muffins, every time (READ IT.).
The Dry Stuff
- 272 g. / 2-2/3 c. King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
- 127 g. / 1/2 cup organic cane sugar
- 13 g. / 1 tbsp aluminum-free baking powder
- 8g. / 1.5 tsp salt
The Wet Stuff
- 237 ml 1 cup whole milk
- 185 ml (2/3 c.) expeller-pressed canola oil.
- 2 large Happy Egg Co. Heritage Breed pasture-raised eggs, or similar large deep yellow yolk eggs.
- 1 ml / 1/8 tsp Beanilla Madagascar bourbon vanilla
- Zest of one small lemon, or half large.
The Fruit Stuff
- 222g 1-1/2 cups fresh blueberries (Frozen never work as well as they’re already popped, and the explosion is what gives these things their magic)
The Topping
Dry Stuff – Topping
In one of the glass work bowls, add the dry ingredients:
- 75 g. / .33 cup organic cane sugar
- 4 g. / 1 tsp. of Swedish vanilla sugar
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- Zest of a small lemon or 1/2 large
Wet Stuff – Topping
In one of the glass work bowls add:
- 42 g. / 3 tbsps Kerrygold Pure Irish butter
The Heat
Heat the oven to 190°c 375°F.
The Steps
The Muffin Pan Prep
Pull out your muffin pan. I prefer a 12-well mini cheesecake pan, 59ml/2oz wells, to a muffin pan. It’s easier to get things loose with the disk bottoms should we have any problems with something spilling over. Easier clean too.
There are two ways to prep it.
The Smart ‘Paper-Wrapped’ Method
I prefer the fancy tulip-style paper cups, because they dress up the muffin, and they help get them out faster.
Grab a 12-slot muffin pan for 2oz. muffins
Put your parchment tulip baking cups into the 12 slots.
The Manual Purist’s Method
“Tulip cups? Are you serious?” You’re muttering to yourself. Of course, you CAN use a 2 oz. non-stick muffin pan. Be sure to still use either a baking-grade shortening, or baking-grade spray, avocado oil spray (Smoke point of 260°c / 500°F) is great. Using cheap sprays, like PAM, with low smoke points, will turn the oil both toxic and bad-tasting.
The Mix
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- Add the ingredients in The Dry Stuff list to the high sided 4-8qt. work bowl.
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- Create a well in the flour to the bottom;
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- Add in the blueberries to the hole that you just made in the center;
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- Add in the liquid bowl, scraping out all of the ingredients into your dry mixing bowl;
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- GENTLY TURN, not mix, the liquid and flour until it is all incorporated. We’re trying to avoid creating too many hard gluten strands. If you want muffins delicate, and crumbly, gluten strands have to be irregular. Even though your grandma will smack me for daring to suggest that you don’t have to get every last lump out of a batter, stir as little as you can to moisten. We’re looking for an irregular, crumbly, wonderful muffin that’s part egg, part risen dough.
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- A soft spatula is best for this.
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- Go from bottom, to top, scraping any loose flout and TURNING it into the wet mix.
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- Make sure that you run your soft spatula from the edge, down to the bottom of the bowl, DOWN-UP-TURN-TO-CENTER to get rid of the large dry flour pockets. Small ones, about the size of a small crouton? AOK. They wet out as they cook.
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- GENTLY TURN, not mix, the liquid and flour until it is all incorporated. We’re trying to avoid creating too many hard gluten strands. If you want muffins delicate, and crumbly, gluten strands have to be irregular. Even though your grandma will smack me for daring to suggest that you don’t have to get every last lump out of a batter, stir as little as you can to moisten. We’re looking for an irregular, crumbly, wonderful muffin that’s part egg, part risen dough.
The Load
Using a 59ml/2oz ladle, Spoon into the paper muffin cups, or tins, to about 2/3ds full on the full size muffin.
The Bake
Put in the oven on the middle rack. Get out your cooling rack, so you’ll be ready, when they come out.
Check the muffins at 15 minutes, and then at 5 minute intervals, until you discover what the sweet spot is for your oven. I’ve worked with ovens where they are done in 18 minutes, and some where it’s more like 25. If they’re lightly golden brown, a bit browner around the edges, muffin peaked, with the wonderful wrinkles that tell you that your batter worked, they come out. Don’t cook to a dark brown. They’ll be dry as dust!
The Cool
Remove your muffins to the cooking rack:
Smart Paper-Wrapped Muffins
Use the paper cups to help you remove the muffins. Remove any excess burned bits from the paper, and discard.
The Manual Purist
If you’ve decided to do it the hard way, take a butter knife, and gently run it around the edges to release any blueberries that might have stuck to the non-stick surface of the pan.
These muffins are VERY SOFT and delicate, so you need to gently get under the crown and test to see if they come up easily. Sometimes they do. If there is resistance, or you can feel the muffin won’t hold together, take the butter knife, run it around again, and then gently insert on one side and help lift it up to where you can grab it better. Set on the rack to cool a bit more.
While they are cooling, put the butter dish in the microwave for 45 seconds at half power. Just enough to melt it, not superheat it.
Take the muffins and dip the crowns in the butter, then gently roll the top in the lemon zested sugar bowl.
Plate and serve. You can take the remaining sugar, if any, and put in a bowl that people can spoon on to the muffins if they so desire.
These are crumbly wonders of gold and blue. Gentle, low stir and magic happens!
