Blueberry Muffins and the Water Displacement Method by Lucy Burdette

LUCY BURDETTE: Seeing a bowl of blueberries in the fridge that were just about to get soft, I had a powerful urge to make blueberry muffins. As far as I’ve experienced, there are none better than the recipe in Once Upon a Chef. As I was gathering the ingredients together, I remembered taking home economics in junior high school. We learned some sewing skills (made an apron!) and also did some cooking. That teacher was strict! We were afraid of her, and afraid to make mistakes. I remembered making muffins—she cut into them at the end and if they had air tunnels inside, our grade was lowered.

For one class, she had us all take part in a baking process exhibition. My assignment was to research and present the water displacement method which I was to explain to the class the next day. I had no idea what this was and there was no Google to look it up. I asked my mother, who was not a big baker except for Christmas cookies and birthday cakes, she didn’t know either. She showed me the way she measured shortening (usually Crisco), and that was to measure a half cup of water and drop Crisco in to bring the liquid up to a one cup line. (That is if you wanted a half cup of shortening.) So I brought that to the class next day. 

“I don’t know what water displacement method is, but this is how my mother measures shortening,” I said.

“That is the water displacement method,” the stern teacher said.

Anyway, that’s neither here nor there, but it got me thinking about home economics and how it’s too bad today’s kids don’t have that class. A little instruction in cooking and sewing could only be a good thing!

And here are Once Upon a Chef's blueberry muffins. 

Ingredients

One stick (8 ounces) butter, softened

One cup sugar

Two large eggs at room temp

One and a half teaspoons vanilla

3/4 teaspoon almond extract

1/2 cup of milk

2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

2 1/4 cups fresh blueberries

Beat the butter with the sugar until light and pale yellow. Beat the eggs in one at a time, spending a couple minutes on each one.

Mix the dry ingredients in a small bowl. Alternate mixing some of the dry ingredients with milk into the rest of the batter. Until everything is gone. Don’t overbeat!

Stir in the blueberries.

Grease a muffin tin, and add paper muffin cups. Distribute the batter between the 12 of them. Bake at 375 for half an hour-ish. Mine were browning at 28 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes before removing them from the pan. Here’s one broken open. No air tunnels there!

Did you take home economics as a young person? Do your kids or grandkids study the art of home making? Is this a lost art or are we just as glad to see it gone out of the schools? And what should I do with all those amazing peaches?

A DELICIOUS DECEPTION can be found at a bookstore near you!

A Delicious Deception has a slightly different tone than some of the earlier books, with more emphasis on family, but I loved it just as much as the rest of the series. Ms. Burdette has created characters who have grown in such natural, believable ways. She delivers an excellent mystery while also weaving in a major, emotional turning point in their lives. There is drama, murder, secrets, late-pregnancy feelings and hormones, a sick father-in-law, home renovations, a fun baby shower, and friends and family ready to tackle whatever comes their way. And in the end, a beautiful baby! Escape with Dollycas

This cozy mystery expertly balances personal stakes with a fast-paced plot in a consistent Burdette fashion. It’s a suspenseful, heart-filled addition to the series that proves Hayley is just as effective at solving crimes as she is at critiquing menus. Netgalley reviewer

Book 15 in the Key West series, paperback edition of THE MANGO MURDERS, is in bookstores now!

USA Today bestselling author Lucy Burdette writes the Key West food critic mystery series including A POISONOUS PALATE and A CLUE IN THE CRUMBS. Join her mailing list right here.

Blueberry Muffins #recipe @vmburns #giveaway

 VMBURNS: I'm currently working on my Baker Street Mystery book #6 and blueberries play a big role in this book. So, I need to test one of my recipes. I've made baked goods with blueberries before, but I am a bit heavy handed with my mixing, which doesn't work well with blueberries. Pretty much everything I've baked has come out blue. If you burst the berries, your baked goods will be blue. They still taste good, but the color change isn't appealing. A little bit of blue is unavoidable. Some of the berries will burst during the baking process, but my goal was to minimize the color bleed. So, this was my challenge. DON'T BREAK THE BERRIES!

For the first time EVER, my blueberries remained in tact. 

BLUEBERRY MUFFINS

Ingredients

• 2/3 Cup of sugar, plus 2 Tablespoons for the top
• 1 large egg
• 1/3 Cup milk
• ½ Cup melted butter
• 1 ½ Teaspoons Vanilla
• 1 ¼ Cup flour
• 1 Teaspoon Baking powder
• ¼ Teaspoon salt
• ½ Cup Sour Cream
• 1 Cup fresh blueberries

InSTRUCTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 375*F. Lighly grease a muffin tin and insert muffin liners.
2.  Combine sugar, egg, butter, milk, and vanilla in a bowl. Stir until well combined.
   
   
   
3. Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt in a separate bowl, then slowly add the flour mixture to the wet. Stir to combine, but don’t overmix.
4. Stir in the sour cream and GENTLY fold in the blueberries.
   
   
   
5. Pour the mixture into the prepared muffin pan, and sprinkle the tablespoon of sugar over the tops.
   
   
   
6. Bake for approximately 25-30 minutes. Remove when a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

• 
  
• READERS: What's your favorite blueberry baked good? Do you like muffins, pies, scones? Do yours come out blue? Or, are you gentler when mixing than I am? It's okay. You can tell me. It won't hurt my feelings if I'm the only one with blue food. Let me know in the comments below. Leave your email address to be included in the drawing. 

MURDER AT FIRST SLICE (ARC)

As Maddy’s wedding day approaches, friends and family descend on the little town of New Bison, Michigan, to celebrate—so much so that Maddy wonders if there might be another happily-ever-after in store for her widowed father and innkeeper Mrs. Law. Unfortunately, she also has to deal with an unhappy couple: feuding cousins Hannah and Dorothy, who haven’t spoken in decades. Maddy can only hope the spectacular wedding cake crafted by her head baker doesn’t wind up as ammunition in a food fight.

But she doesn’t have to wait long for a wedding disaster to strike. When the imperious Dorothy crashes the rehearsal dinner—with several uninvited guests in tow—and starts battering everyone with constant complaints, the drama reaches reality-show levels. And the next day, Dorothy is dead . . . with Hannah standing over the body, bloody rolling pin in hand.

Nobody in town believes Miss Hannah could commit murder. But a detective newly relocated from New York doesn’t know the sweet, memory-challenged Hannah the way the locals do—and the evidence seems open-and-shut as an oven. Now, with her sous-sleuths the Baker Street Irregulars, the bride-to-be is busy digging into Dorothy’s past to catch a killer before she cuts the cake . . .

BUY LINK

Muffins, Oh, We Love Muffins! #Recipe Roundup

LESLIE BUDEWITZ: Every so often, you've got to have a muffin. Almost every Sunday morning, at our house! We like to bake up a batch, eat a few while they're fresh and warm, then cool and freeze the rest, 2 or 4 in a bag, since we're a two-human household. Happily, muffins freeze nicely. And even more happily, the Kitchen crew has many wonderful muffin recipes to choose from. Here are a few for your Sunday morning, or any day of the week!  

Lemon Zucchini Muffins Peg Cochran serves up these tasty Lemon Zucchini Muffins (pictured above), which she describes as "Weight Watchers style." I'm a Lifetime member myself, and one of the things I appreciate about how the program has evolved over the years is that you can actually eat muffins and other delicious treats and still lose weight. 

Our founding member, now a Kitchen alumna, Krista Davis, shares these Valentine Brunch Muffins, aka Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins. It's a classic flavor combo, and by golly, they look good enough to eat!  Regular blog readers know we enjoy sharing Halloween-themed recipes every fall, and our Maddie Day (aka Edith Maxwell) offers these fabulous Pumpkin Carrot Cake Muffins.   

Another alumna, Daryl Wood Gerber, is famous for baking gluten-free treats so good you'll never miss the gluten. She's actually shared two terrific recipes for gluten-free blueberry muffins, one traditional, which she calls Sunday Blueberry Muffins, and one for Gluten-Free, Sugar-Free Blueberry Muffins.  And speaking of blueberries, one of our newer members, Molly MacRae, offers these Sourdough Blueberry Muffins. 

Click here for the recipe.

Muffins don't have to be sweet treats.  And in our house, these Omelet Muffins are year-round faves, especially popular at our annual holiday brunch. They're quite flexible, easily made with almost any combination of cheese and veggies you have on hand. For another savory option, try Cleo Coyle's Corn Muffin Tops a la Julia Child from the early years of the blog. And of course, many corn bread recipes can be baked in muffin tins -- if you lack one of those cool old pans with molds in the shapes of ears of corn!

Remember the old Pillsbury Dough Boy ads proclaiming "Nothing says lovin' like a fresh-baked muffin"? Well, okay, we revised it a bit. Whatever muffins you choose, we hope you bake, serve, and eat with love and joy! 

What muffins are favorites
in your household? 

Do tell!

🍰

~ The Mystery Lovers' Kitchen crew

Very Berry Muffins @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: I was craving blueberry muffins last week and came across a good-looking recipe at Once Upon a Chef. I followed her recipe, with a few tweaks—some strawberries instead of all blue since it’s that season in our garden, a little less salt, and cinnamon in the sugar topping. So delicious! And it turned out that they are red, white and blue, so perfect for the Fourth of July!

I made these twice, once with an electric beater and once in my food processor. The second was definitely easier, but be careful not to over-beat at any stage—it’s easy to do that with a machine. And I think you might be able to tell that in the strawberry batch, I forgot to sift the flour over the berries before mixing them in.

INGREDIENTS

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, softened

1 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon almond extract

1/2 cup milk

2-1/4 cups fresh blueberries, or combination with strawberries

2 tablespoons coarse sugar 

½ teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 350.

Let the ingredients come to room temperature, then cream the butter with the sugar. Add the eggs one at a time and beat after each. Mix in the two extracts.

Combine the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl. Add the dry alternately with the milk, beating lightly after each.

Sift a bit of flour over the berries, and then fold them into the batter. Mix the cinnamon with the sugar.

Spray a muffin pan with oil, and then place paper muffin cups inside. Scoop the batter into the prepared pan and sprinkle with cinnamon/sugar mixture. 

Bake for 26-30 minutes, until tops are golden brown. (I took mine out after 26.)

And T-bone would like to let you know that THE KEY LIME CRIME will be out as a trade paperback on July 13. You can order it here.

And please take a look at my brand-new gorgeous website, LucyBurdette.com

Sourdough Blueberry Muffins from Molly MacRae

Aren’t these muffins . . . gorgeous? I used beautiful, tiny, wild blueberries that, although kept frozen until the last minute, started to thaw as soon as I folded them into the batter. If they’d been larger, they might not have dyed the batter deep purple. But I told my family this is the way the sourdough blueberry muffins are supposed to look, and because the muffins were absolutely delicious, and my family is endlessly kind, we decided that the muffins were also absolutely gorgeous. May you be so lucky with your muffins and family.

 

Sourdough Blueberry Muffins (adapted from the King Arthur Baking Company)

 

Makes 12 large muffins

425 F

 

Ingredients:

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

1 cup yellow cornmeal

¾ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon

1 cup sourdough starter, fed or discard

¼ cup milk

1 large egg

¼ cup melted butter

¼ cup honey

2 tablespoons molasses

2 tablespoons maple syrup

2 cups blueberries, fresh or frozen

Demerara or other coarse sugar for sprinkling tops

Note on sweeteners: use any combination of proportions to equal the ½ cup – even an entire ½ cup of maple syrup if you have it.

Instructions:

1.      Grease wells of a 12-cup muffin pan.

2.      Combine dry ingredients in mixing bowl.

3.      In another bowl, beat together starter, milk, egg, melted butter, sweetener.

4.      Blend wet ingredients with dry just until mixed.

5.      Gently stir in blueberries just until blended.

6.      Fill prepared pan two-thirds full and sprinkle tops with sugar.

7.      Bake 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

8.      Allow muffins to cool in pan for 5 minutes, then remove from pan.

3/4 tsp salt, 1 tsp baking soda, 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Combine dry ingredients in mixing bowl

1 cup sourdough starter, 1/2 cup sweetener, 1/4 cup milk, 1/4 cup melted butter, 1 large egg

 

Beat together wet ingrdients

Combine dry ingredients with wet just until blended

Gently fold in blueberries just until blended

Fill cups of prepared pan two-thirds full and sprinkle tops with sugar

Absolutely gorgeous and absolutely delicious!

The Boston Globe says Molly MacRae writes “murder with a dose of drollery.” She’s the author of the award-winning, national bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries and the Highland Bookshop Mysteries. As Margaret Welch, she writes books for Annie’s Fiction. Her short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine since 1990 and she’s a winner of the Sherwood Anderson Award for Short Fiction. Visit Molly on Facebook and Pinterest and connect with her on Twitter  or Instagram.

  

Things Happen - Blueberry "Loaf" #recipe + books #giveaway

From Daryl:

Things happen. Often things slip away from us. We thought we had a guest for today and it turns out, mixed signals! We don't.

BUT WE DO HAVE A BOOKS GIVEAWAY.  Yes, books.  Two of Krista's books plus 2 of my  books to one commenter.  See below.


I adore blueberries. I also adore brown sugar! I love it added to coffee cake and anything banana. So I recently added brown sugar to my cereal and adorned it with blueberries. Voila. Something new, different, and filled with things I love.

I also adore blueberry muffins. You can see where this is going. I've shared a recipe for gluten-free muffins made with pure cane sugar before. For a change, I added brown sugar to the mix and rather than make the semi-time-consuming muffins, I poured the whole mix into a loaf pan.

When I'm on deadline, easy is important. Mix and dump is important. Faster, faster is important. So I have more time to write.

So here is an easy, fast, blueberry loaf that turned out deliciously moist!

*This is a gluten-free recipe, but it's easy to make it regular. Just switch out the GF flour for regular and omit the xanthan gum.

Enjoy!

Blueberry Loaf
Gluten-free but can be made "normal"

Preheat oven 375 degrees

Makes 1 loaf

Ingredients:

½ cup plus 2 T. milk

½ cup butter (1 stick), at room temperature (I melt it in microwave)

1 1/4 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon GF vanilla extract (vanillin is okay)

2 ½ cups blueberries 

2 teaspoons GF baking powder

½ teaspoon Xanthan gum

¼ teaspoon salt

1/2 cup potato starch

1/2 cup tapioca starch

1 cup sweet white rice flour

1 tablespoon whey powder

Directions:

Mix the milk, butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla extract.

Mash 1 cup of the blueberries. Add the berries and the GF baking powder to the mix.

Stir together the gluten-free flours, xanthan gum, whey powder, and salt. Add the flour to the egg mixture.

Add 1 ½ cup MORE blueberries, whole (not mashed). Fold together.

Pour into greased loaf pan.

Bake 45 minutes

Book Giveaway

Things happen. Do you ever miss an appointment? 
A date? A birthday?
Leave a comment to win 2 of Krista's books and 2 of my books, 
And remember to leave your email so we can contact 
you if you win.