Best Blueberry Muffin--Ever!

Wow!

This was an awful lot of work for a muffin, but even my non-sweet loving husband adored these.

The recipe is from Cook's Illustrated May/Jun 09 p. 21.

It even requires you to make your own "jam" and zesting of a lemon, I used a Meyer Lemon b/c that's pretty much all I keep at hand.

The results are remarkable. Here's a picture of mine http://twitpic.com/a581s/full

And the blog where I found the recipe here. She got permission from Cook's Illustrated to print it. My copy of the May/June issue was in WI on a hunt for trout inside of our car.
http://basicallybaked.wordpress.com/200 ... lustrated/

Really worth the effort. I don't want to eat another blueberry muffin, I certainly will not prepare another.

Hi,

I used this method - making a kind if jam - when I was experimenting with a strawberry-banana bread. The only recipes I could find called for adding chopped strawberries to banana bread batter. Not enough strawberry flavor for me. So looking for ideas I found this recipe and cooked down and crushed about a cup or strawberries and used that with a cup of chopped strawberries.

Turned out well. I though the strawberry and banana flavors were better balanced. And nobody died. Have been meaning to try it again to make sure it wasn't a fluke.

Mary

HI,

I like strawberries. I like bananas. I just never really cared much for the combo of strawberry and banana.

This post comes at a good time, I bought quite a few blueberries today. I was thinking jam or ice cream, though muffins may be a great use, too. Thanks for highlighting this.

Regards,

Ok. It doesn't take that much time, it just is a lot of time like the blog post says for a muffin if you are used to a quick 1 bowl/ quick bread version of muffin cooking.

I'm planning on trying the best chocolate chip cookies out of the same issue as well as a quick tomato sauce.

got the chance to taste one of paris4life's muffins. i may not be the best judge as i am not a fan of blueberry but i certainly was a fan of the "jam like" fruit in the muffin. the muffin was moist and more on the dense side. i wonder if this batter recipe could be used with other fruits. nice job!

I made these today, and they are excellent, well worth the extra steps. But since I don't like to wait for muffins, in the future, I would make the "jam" and the lemon zested sugar ahead of time and have them at the ready. This would considerably shorten the prep time. Another note: since I had only olive oil on hand, I made the muffins with all butter - they came out just fine.

Josephine wrote:I made these today, and they are excellent, well worth the extra steps. But since I don't like to wait for muffins, in the future, I would make the "jam" and the lemon zested sugar ahead of time and have them at the ready. This would considerably shorten the prep time. Another note: since I had only olive oil on hand, I made the muffins with all butter - they came out just fine.

I'm with you Josephine. I would also make the "jam" ahead of time, perhaps the night before, if you were going to have them for a weekend breakfast offering. The zesting wasn't that big of a deal to me, but yeah, I wonder how long you could keep that at hand in the fridge. I could see it being a nice addition to other batters, cake, bread, or waffle (either inside or on top).