Sour Cream Blueberry Muffins
While shopping for groceries, my mom asked, “Do you want blueberries?” My answer to any “Do you want” is usually “Sure, why not?” After getting the blueberries, a few days passed and I was reminded that I should finish them (especially after finding mold in strawberries that throwing that out). Spending four bucks on a pack of blueberries that I could finish in a minute seemed inefficient in a money/enjoyment sense, so I thought, “what can I make with blueberries?” A blueberry milkshake!
Just kidding I made blueberry muffins. I referenced a couple recipes for this. I took a recipe directly out The New Best Recipe, and added the suggesting of creating a blueberry jam from Cook’s Illustrated online. First, put oven at 350.
- Add 1 cup (plus or minus some random error) blueberries to a small sauce pan
- Add some sugar to that
- Cook on medium heat, mashing up the blueberries incredibly inefficiently with a wooden spatula because I don’t have a muller
Now for the batter:
- 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (I used bleached)
- 1 TB baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 egg (calls for large. I don’t know what I used. it worked)
- 1 cup sugar
- 4 TB unsalted butter
- 5/4 cup sour cream
- Vanilla (my addition)
One of the best secrets I have learned over time in baking is sour cream. The soft, rich texture of the cream adds a delicate moistness to any baked good, while the sharp tart flavor is diminished into a background complement. Adding more butter and oil, although makes the baked good soft, they can easily make it too oily and do not add the light springiness desired. I’ll consider testing creme fraiche in the future if I can get my hand on some though (less sour). This is no different for muffins. Mix the dry ingredients together. Mix the wet ingredients together. Mix both together and get the batter. Oh and remember… you’re adding baking power. For anything involving baking powder, you want to get that thing into the oven soon after it touches water. The redox reaction that creates the nice airy bubbles starts right away upon exposure to water.
Now mix in the blueberries. I found the blueberries to be hard to stir and to take up a lot of space in the batter. The recipe calls for 3/2 cups, but I probably used just a little over a half.
After placing the resulting mixture in a greased muffin pan, I then added a spoonful of jam onto the top of each muffin and swirled. I may have mixed a little too much just on top. (Follow what Cook’s Illustrated says and poke a deep crater into each muffin and only swirl a little bit if you want to get something better looking that what I had. ) Bake for 25 minutes or until testing with a toothpick indicates that it is done.
I’m used to eating muffins from Costco so the comparison isn’t exactly fair, but I felt the muffins were delicious. The vanilla and sour cream added just the right amount of flavor and richness to elevate this from just OK to something more. It had the consistency of a nice, moist cake, although the pockets of air weren’t as big as I expected them to be. Maybe this was because the baking powder is slightly older. Anyways, I highly recommend trying this or some variant of it. Its easy to make, and turned out to be a pretty well 
Rate: 4.5/5
p.s. About my ratings. They’re probably all a little high just because when I fully expect anything I work on to come out tasting like crap, its a taste-elevating surprise to find out that it actually tastes like food. Another thing to know about me – there is almost nothing [edible] in the world that I don’t like to eat.