A break from cupcakes this week, I got a request for blueberry muffins so tried my hand at my first muffins instead. Of course, having an excuse to purchase yet another piece of equipment (just a humble 12 muffin pan) helped. I sometimes wonder if I have more fun prepping and shopping for my baking experiments than I do baking!
I sometimes hear people debating whether something is a cupcake or a muffin, but the differences have always seemed quite obvious to me. A muffin is something you'd eat with coffee, or at breakfast with no guilt. A cupcake is something you'd eat mid-afternoon, with tea. (That's not to say you can't eat either of these any other time of course, I eat cupcakes for dinner after all. Just that if you had to pick one occasion and accompanying hot drink, that's what cupcakes and muffins would pair up with naturally). Muffins have puffed up tops (hence the dreaded fashion term, "muffin top") and no frosting.
Have not really eaten a blueberry muffin here that I would eat again, so took a little time researching a recipe. In the end I went with a combination of three: Fine Cooking's Blueberry muffins with cinnamon crumble as my base, with the jam technique from Cook's Illustrated's Best Blueberry muffins with frozen blueberries, and the chopped apple and lemon zest additions from Ottolenghi's Blueberry crumble muffins.
They came out very light and moist, really very cake-like. I'd say they're a do-over. I'd add more blueberries next time, and cut down on the cinnamon and nutmeg even more. Was hoping the flavours of these spices would blend into the rest, as they are not two of my favourites (strange how I can take any number and amount of pungent Asian spices, but these two "Western" mainstays just disagree with me!). In fact they quite overpower everything else, including the zest (another of my not-quite-favourite flavours). But the texture is so delightful that I had no trouble gulping one of these down, warm from the oven.
And they make the house smell amazing!
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