Blueberry muffins
Blueberry muffins are a classic American quick bread: you simply mix the dry and wet ingredients and bake, no mixer needed. They rise into tall, sugar-crusted domes with a soft, moist crumb dotted with juicy, slightly tart blueberries and a hint of lemon zest, perfect for breakfast.
- Difficulty
- Very easy
- Prep
- 15 min
- Cook
- 24 min
- Rising or chilling
- 15 min
- Total time
- 54 min
- Method
- Oven-baked
Ingredients
Batter
Sugar topping
Instructions
Step 1
Preheat the oven to 190°C and line twelve muffin cups with paper liners or brush them with a thin layer of oil. A fully hot oven from the start helps the muffins spring up into tall domes in the first few minutes. The oven is ready once it has heated for at least fifteen minutes and the heating light has switched off.
Step 2
Sift 250 g all-purpose flour, 10 g baking powder and a pinch salt into a large bowl, add 150 g granulated sugar and 3 g lemon zest, then rub everything together with your fingertips. Rubbing the zest into the sugar releases its fragrant oils throughout the mix. The mixture is ready when it's evenly loose and smells distinctly of lemon.
Step 3
In another bowl, whisk 100 g eggs with 120 g whole milk, 80 g vegetable oil and 5 g vanilla extract. Blending the wet ingredients well first means you only need to mix briefly once they meet the flour. The wet mixture is ready when the eggs are fully broken up, with no strands of white and no oil floating on top.
Step 4
Pour the wet mixture into the center of the dry ingredients and use a spatula to fold gently from the bottom up about fifteen to twenty times. Muffins need only a light mix; overmixing makes them chewy, with long tunnel-like holes. The batter is ready when it's still a bit lumpy with a few small streaks of flour.
Step 5
Toss 180 g fresh blueberries in a little flour taken from the bowl, then drop them into the batter and fold two or three times. The flour coating keeps the berries from all sinking to the bottom and limits purple streaks. This step is done when the berries are spread throughout and most are still whole.
Step 6
Scoop the batter into the cups until nearly level with the rim, then sprinkle 15 g granulated sugar evenly over the tops. Well-filled cups let the muffins rise into round domes above the pan, while the sugar forms a crisp, sparkly crust. The pan is ready when all the cups are equally full and the tops are speckled with sugar.
Step 7
Bake at 190°C for 20 to 25 minutes, rotating the pan once after about fifteen minutes. Rotating helps the muffins in the corners and in the middle bake evenly. The muffins are done when the domes are golden, lightly cracked and a skewer inserted into the cake (not a berry) comes out clean.
Step 8
Leave the muffins in the pan for about ten minutes, then lift them onto a rack to cool a little more before eating. The rest lets the crumb settle and the blueberries cool from scalding hot. The muffins are ready when they don't sink as you pick them up and the bottoms are dry.
Equipment
- Oven
- Muffin tin
- Whisk
- Spatula
- Sieve
- Kitchen scale
- Mixing bowl
- Wire cooling rack
Tips
- If you're using frozen blueberries, add them straight from the freezer so the color doesn't bleed, and bake about three minutes longer.
- You can swap the oil for melted unsalted butter for more flavor, but the crumb will dry out a little faster after the first day.
- For even taller muffin tops, rest the batter in the fridge for about thirty minutes before scooping it into the pan.
Storage
The muffins keep for two days at room temperature in an airtight container lined with paper towels. You can freeze them individually in sealed bags for up to two months, then simply warm them in a 160°C oven for about ten minutes.
Common problems and how to fix them
- The blueberries all sank to the bottom.
- The batter was too thin or the berries weren't coated in flour. Toss the berries in flour and keep the batter thick enough to scoop rather than pour.
- The muffins are chewy with long holes inside.
- The batter was overmixed, which developed the gluten. Next time, stop mixing while the batter is still a bit lumpy.
This recipe is based on the common ratios for this bake and is written entirely in our own words.
