If you google "best blueberry muffins," you will, without a doubt, come across this recipe for the Best Blueberry Muffins in the 2009 May edition of the Cook's Illustrated food magazine. The recipe has pretty much gone viral, popping up in a ton of food blogs and recipe websites.
What makes these muffins so much better than the rest? Cook's Illustrated uses both fresh blueberries and a quick homemade blueberry jam in the batter, amping up the blueberry flavor and also providing a beautiful white and purple marbled muffin batter. The original recipe calls for dust of crunchy lemon sugar on top. However, my requisite for any breakfast muffin is a healthy dose of crunchy and sweet butter streusel on top. It's the best part of the muffin in my opinion. I ended up replacing the lemon sugar with some quick streusel spiked with vanilla. While yummy, it still ended up a little bland for me so I recommend adding some cinnamon or lemon zest to the streusel for some extra flavor.
Best Blueberry Muffins
adapted from Cook's Illustrated
Ingredients
For the muffins:
2 cups (about 10 ounces) fresh blueberries, picked over
1 1/8 cups (8 ounces) plus 1 teaspoon sugar
2 1/2 cups (12½ ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon table salt
2 large eggs
4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
¼ cup vegetable oil
1 cup buttermilk
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
For the crumb:
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons light brown sugar
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
pinch of salt
1/2 tsp of cinnamon or lemon zest (optional)
Directions
For the streusel:
Using a fork, mix all crumb ingredients together until well-combined. Set aside.
For the muffins:
Adjust oven rack to upper-middle position and heat oven to 425 degrees. Spray standard muffin tin with nonstick cooking spray or use cupcake liners for easy clean up. Bring 1 cup blueberries and 1 teaspoon sugar to simmer in small saucepan over medium heat. Cook, mashing berries with spoon several times and stirring frequently, until berries have broken down and mixture is thickened and reduced to ¼ cup, about 6 minutes. Transfer to small bowl and cool to room temperature, 10 to 15 minutes.
Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt together in large bowl. Toss in blueberries and coat with the flour.
Whisk remaining 11/8 cups sugar and eggs together in medium bowl until thick and homogeneous, about 45 seconds. Slowly whisk in butter and oil until combined. Whisk in buttermilk and vanilla until combined. Using rubber spatula, fold egg mixture and remaining cup blueberries into flour mixture until just moistened. (Batter will be very lumpy with few spots of dry flour; do not overmix.)
Use ice cream scoop or large spoon to divide batter equally among prepared muffin cups (batter should completely fill cups and mound slightly). Spoon teaspoon of cooked berry mixture into center of each mound of batter. Using chopstick or skewer, gently swirl berry filling into batter using figure-eight motion. Sprinkle streusel over the top of the muffins.
Bake until muffin tops are golden and just firm, 17 to 19 minutes, rotating muffin tin from front to back halfway through baking time. Cool muffins in muffin tin for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire rack and cool 5 minutes before serving.
The muffins were quite an impressive sight coming out of the oven, with a beautiful deep purple-red muffin top, studded with buttery, crispy golden crumbs.The inside of the muffins were pretty too, with pockets of bluebery jam, whole blueberries and moist, white cake. I have to say that these muffins were pretty darn tasty. The recipe will definitely become my go-to recipe for yummy blueberry muffins!
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