mmmm.....Muffins!

Haven't posted in a long while - my camera had some problems and February was short anyway...so here I am, back at it!

I was in the mood to bake and I had some blueberries that I needed to use, so I found a basic muffin recipe in King Arthur Flour Bakers Companion for "All-Star Muffins" which includes several variations as possibilities.

I gathered my ingredients, turned on my oven, and prepped my pans.  I've only recently in my life discovered the wonderful world of portion control scoops.  Aren't those liners cute?  Most of the cute faded away in the baking process, though.  :-(

I cut up my butter and let it come up to room temperature in the mixing bowl while I assembled the rest of the ingredients.

Here's the dry ingredients (except the sugar - sugar is regarded as a 'wet' ingredient due to how it behaves).

Ok, so you blend the softened butter and the sugar together until light and fluffy.  This takes a few minutes.

Not there yet....

Almost there...

There it is...light and fluffy.

I added my eggs one at a time.  For me this is easier done by prepping each of them in their own little bowl.  Mix after each addition.  Also, that spatula there is by Kitchen Aid and it may look like a funny shape, but it really is the best for scraping the bottom of my (also Kitchen Aid) mixer.  

Next goes some sour cream and vanilla. Mix well.

  

And then the dry ingredients...You don't want to overmix at this point or you will activate the gluten too much and have a heavier product.  Just gently mix until combined and stop.

Ok, so that's the basic mix, and from here you can make several variations.  I had some blueberries that I wanted to use up, but for some strange reason, I also wanted some chocolate in there.  So I used some 'mini' chips with the berries.

See how tiny they are compared to a regular sized chip?

I folded in those last add-ins by hand.

I scooped them into the liners and dusted them with some cinnamon sugar.  I used my small strainer for this to help make the coating nice and even.

Ready to go.  I got a few more muffins than the recipe said I'd get - I guess they figured on a bit larger muffin, but this worked out nice for me.

And done!  My two pans are a bit different.  The blue one on the left is enamel-coated cast iron and has slightly smaller cups.  I just watched them closely for time and ended up taking the other pan out a few minutes before the heavier cast iron one.

Not sure if you can see what I mean here...

But this was the difference in the final product.  Both tasted the same (yummy!), but the ones made in the smaller cups were forced to rise a bit more.  (Remember I used a portion control scoop so the same amount of batter went into each cup.)

Delicious!

~ks