Hamstergbert's Blueberry Muffins
(serves one very, very greedy hamstergbert, or up to 12 'norms')
100 g Unsalted butter melted in the microwave (note 1)
120 g Golden Caster Sugar. Granulated if you're out of caster.
3 Large eggs. (see note 2)
150 ml Semi-skimmed milk, (note 2)
3 tsp Good quality vanilla extract
OR 2 tsp extract plus 1 tbsp Monin vanilla syrup if you have it in.
240 g Plain flour
3 tsp Baking powder
pinch Salt.
150gm Blueberries of which keep a couple of dozen aside to stick on top of the muffins.
- Warm your oven up to 180-190 and load a muffin tray with a dozen paper cases. The tulip ones if you can get or make them look particularly nice.
- Throw the sugar, eggs, milk and vanilla extract on top of the melted butter and give the brew a good couple of minutes with an electric hand mixer until the butter is emulsified ie doesn't quickly separate out again when you stop, then another minute or so.
- Mix the flour, baking powder and salt together then sift on top of the liquid mix. Sprinkle most the blueberries fairly evenly on the top of the sifted flour etc then very roughly fold in.
- DO NOT OVER-MIX should be very rough and ready with intermittent glimpses of bits of dry ingredients scattered through the batter. Most common cause of duff muffins is over-mixing at this point.
- Scrape the batter into a jug and carefully split between the dozen muffin cases (I find it easiest to put a small dollop into each to settle the case into the tray and then mess about trying to get the rest of the batter split evenly between them all. Press a couple of the retained blueberries into the top of each muffin.
- Tray into the oven and bake for about 25 mins. I usually rotate the tray on the shelf after about 15 mins and check after 20 mins to ensure they are not over-browning.
- When satisfied with the colour, tray out of the oven and leave the muffins to cool in the tray for 10 15 mins, then onto a wire rack to cool fully for a further 30 mins, apart from one extracted for quality control purposes which is OK to check by eating as soon as it feels cool enough.
- Nice to lightly dust a bit of icing sugar on them once they have cooled fully. Go nicely with a cup of nice coffee in the garden in the even nicer spring sunshine.
Notes
1. I generally zap the butter for 20 seconds at a time, leave for half a minute, check consistency then give it more bursts of 10 or 20 secs until it turns.
2. If you can be that organised, try and take the eggs and milk out of the fridge a couple of hours before you use them so they can crawl up to room temperature.
3. Depending on your personal preference you may wish to tweak the flavours by grating a bit of nutmeg into the batter along with the flour etc, or even mixing zest of a lemon with the blueberries before you stir them in.
enjoy.