Blueberry Bliss

Something that was never lacking in my childhood was blueberries. The entire field next to my house would bloom in the spring and bring forth a sea of blue and purple berries, so big and perfect that it was hard not to eat them right off the bush! So when I stumbled across this recipe on the Joy of Baking website for Blueberry Streusel Muffins, I had to try it!

So, I got together my ingredients:

In a measuring cup went the milk, eggs and vanilla extract to be whisked together.

In another bowl, the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt got combined.

Meanwhile, LMC's new biggest fan rolled his way into the kitchen perimeter.

Now, if you own a pastry cutter and have owned it for a while, you'll likely have forgotten the frustration of trying to complete the next step with two knives. For some reason, I've no pastry cutter to speak of, so there were several words spoken while cutting the butter into the flour mixture than cannot be repeated on LMC, lest we lose our family friendly rating!!

Take the butter and cut it into small pieces.

Then using a pastry cutter or *grumble* two knives, cut the butter into the mix. It should resemble coarse crumbs when it's fully incorporated. No word of a lie, I probably didn't incorporate it as much as I should have, but my oven was beeping impatiently and I wanted to move on without throwing the aforementioned knives!

Reserve 1 cup of this mixture for the topping later on.

Next went the blueberries and lemon zest into the flour/butter/doom mixture. If you've never done lemon zest, it's really quite easy. I surprisingly had a whole lemon on hand. Somehow, it survived the bottle of tequila that came and went through the house last weekend!! So, to make lemon zest, just rub the peel part of a lemon on that weird little side of the grater you never use for anything else. Ideally, you'll get some yellow and white parts of the peel in there!

Make sure to take it easy while stirring the berries in so the batter doesn't turn purple when you add the liquid!

Speaking of liquid, it's time to add the milk/egg/vanilla mixture from the first step!

 Don't stir too much or else the batter will get tough. It's a pretty thick batter, so an ice cream scoop will work perfectly when dividing it up among the cups! I was able to make 18 good sized muffins by equally dividing the batter with my standard ice cream scoop. Two spoons would work as well.

Now, take the previously reserved cup of flour/butter mixture and add the melted butter. Mix with a fork until it's well combined and crumbly. Put a generous tablespoon of topping on each muffin.

 Bake until lightly browned and enjoy!

These were SO good! They had a nice crumbly top and super moist center.

Go to the Joy of Baking for the full recipe and enjoy!!

Blueberry Streusel Muffins

Happy Baking!

Crystal