Cream Blueberry Muffins by Barbara
Substitutions can lead to happy accidents, a concept we know well from living in a scientific community where experiments have led to some very successful products like CorningWare.
In our home laboratory, our kitchen, I often experiment with substitutions of ingredients and changes to the techniques in recipes. Or I wing it without a recipe at all. Tom really likes to add extra ingredients to his recipes, like chocolate chips to chili. Sometimes our results fail, and other times, they create variations better than the original.
In this case, I had a pint of blueberries to use up before we left for vacation, so I turned to my favorite blueberry muffin recipe (originally posted in 2012). But I was short on blueberries, so I used a mashed banana. (You don't taste the banana in the end.) And I also had a cup of heavy cream to use up, so I substituted it for milk. And the big surprise when making the muffins was that we were almost out of sugar. The kicker was that we were out of baking spray, too, so I had to butter the muffin tin with real butter. And I skipped the nutmeg sugar topping. The results were heavenly. So soft and creamy. Full of blueberry flavor. Look at the puffy peak on these muffins!
---Barbara
Cream Blueberry Muffins
Makes 12 regular muffins
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup clover honey
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 t. vanilla extract
2 t. baking powder
1/4 t. salt
1 pint blueberries, rinsed and very dry (about 2 cups)
1/2 cup mashed banana (1 medium banana)
2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup heavy cream
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Grease muffin pans very well, including the area within each cup. I used butter, but baking spray will work well.
In a stand mixer, beat the butter until creamy.
Beat in the butter. Scrape the sides.
Beat in the honey. Scrape the sides.
Beat in the eggs, one at a time, scraping the sides in between each addition.
Beat in the vanilla, baking powder and salt. Scrape the sides.
Add the mashed banana, and mix gently, until incorporated.
Remove from stand mixer.
Fold in half of the flour with a spatula.
Then half of the cream.
Add the remaining flour.
Then the remaining cream.
Fold in the blueberries, and mix until evenly distributed, but don't overmix.
Scoop batter evenly into the muffin cups.
Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until golden brown. Mine took 25 minutes.
Important: Let the muffins sit in the pan to cool for at least 30 minutes before removing or they will fall apart.
If necessary, run a knife under the muffin top and along the sides of the muffin pan to get them to release.
They are very good!
They froze well. I packed up two together in freezer bags to have with our morning coffee. It is nice to have something in the freezer to pull out. Which we have been doing since we came back from vacation.
B