blueberries – covered in flour

It felt like a long wait – in fact, it probably felt even longer to the hubs than it did to me – but after two weeks of unpacking and organizing frenzies, I finally had the energy to pull out my favorite stainless steel mixing bowl (it belonged to my mom before I talked her into giving it to me, it’s older than me and still gorgeous) and my best wooden spoon and dusted myself with a cloud of flour. For my first messy baking in the new house, I decided to make muffins. My parents were sleeping in the guest bedroom upstairs and I wanted them to wake up to delicious aromas wafting up from the kitchen. (It didn’t hurt that I was up early enough to be dressed and ready for church with these muffins cooling on the countertop and a perfectly clean kitchen waiting for them when they got downstairs. I love when I look like I have it all together!)

I wanted to do something a little creative, both to impress the parentals and also just because it had been weeks since I’d baked anything and I was itchy. So I picked coffeecake muffins out of Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook and did a little editing of my own. The original recipe called for plums, but it’s obviously not plum season so I substituted frozen blueberries to great effect. And, because I love the flavors of berries and almond together, I switched out the vanilla extract for almond extract. You can certainly use vanilla, but the almond extract gave the muffins a wonderful, subtle almond flavor that worked very well with the blueberries. Oh, and I also cheated a bit – instead of making my own cinnamon sugar, I used my cinnamon sugar blend from Penzey’s. Martha would probably be mad at me, but whatevs. I still felt like I was on top of my game (for once) and that’s what counts, right?

Blueberry Coffeecake Muffins

1 stick unsalted butter, melted
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
pinch of ground nutmeg
2 large eggs (room temperature)
1 teaspoon almond extract (or sub vanilla)
3/4 cup milk
1 pint blueberries, washed
cinnamon sugar

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Prepare a muffin tin with liners or by greasing it with a cooking spray that includes flour (such as PAM for Baking or Baker’s Joy).
Whisk together the dry ingredients – flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg and sugar – in a large bowl. Set aside.
In another bowl, whisk together the melted butter, eggs, almond extract and milk. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and fold together with a silicone spatula or rubber spoon.
Fill the muffin cups halfway with batter – you should have plenty of batter left over. Drop several blueberries atop each pile of batter. Spoon remaining batter over the blueberries – but don’t cover them completely! The blueberries are so cute peeking out of the muffins! Sprinkle each muffin with cinnamon sugar.
Bake 18-20 minutes, until muffins are golden brown on top and a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean (or as clean as it can, since you’re dealing with cooked fruit here). Cool on a wire rack for several minutes and serve warm.

Yield: Martha’s recipe says you get 10 muffins from this, but she must be using a bigger muffin tin than I am, because I got 12.

Source: Adapted from Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook

I was having a really lousy day on Friday. Part of my lousy day – though not all – was due to the fact that I had ordered a new baking book from Amazon on Wednesday, or started to, anyway. I guess I never completed the order (dratted short attention span) and I had the unpleasant surprise on Friday morning of finding out that the book I expected that afternoon was still sitting in my virtual shopping cart, and not on a delivery truck as I had thought. This made me extremely cranky, so I did what I always do when I am cranky – I wrote a list of grievances and emailed it to the hubs. Because he loves to help, and because he knows I love to bake on the weekends, my book arrived at my door the very next day on a rush order. Does it get sweeter than that? He deserved a special treat after this one, so bang, on goes the apron and out of the kitchen comes this:

Blueberry Cobbler with Cornmeal Biscuit

Fruit Filling
1/4 cup granulated sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 dry pints blueberries (fresh, if possible)
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

Cornmeal Biscuit
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cornmeal
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 cup cold cream (the recipe calls for heavy, I used light)
4 teaspoons turbinado sugar

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Butter a 2-quart baking dish.
Combine sugar, cornstarch and salt in a large bowl. Add blueberries and toss to coat. Gently stir or fold in lemon juice. Spoon the blueberry mixture into the prepared baking dish.
To make the biscuits, whisk together flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder and salt in a large mixing bowl. Add the butter and cut in with a pastry cutter, or rub in with your fingers (more fun) until the butter is the size of peas. Pour in the cream and stir to combine.
Divide the dough into 8 pieces – if you use a standard-sized ice cream scoop, you will have just enough – and pat into biscuits. Place over the fruit filling, then sprinkle with the turbinado sugar.
Bake 45 minutes, until the biscuits are golden and the fruit filling is bubbling up. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

Thanks for the book, honey!

Source: Adapted from Rustic Fruit Desserts, by Cory Schreiber and Julie Richardson