In My Mother's Kitchen: Blueberry Muffins
When I was growing up, weekday breakfast was pretty much always two bowls of cereal with skim milk. The exact kind of cereal varied based on whatever was on sale, but given my mother's tendency toward nutritious food I missed out on many of the traditional sugary cereals of youth. About as sugary as we got was Lucky Charms or Honey Nut Cheerios, both of which were, in my mother's estimation, sufficiently sugary that she would mix them with plain Cheerios to reduce our sugar intake. One side effect of this is that I actually really enjoy Grape Nuts.
On the weekends, breakfast was a different story. The range of options varied by time and inclination, but in my retrospective opinion the absolute best breakfast my mother made was homemade blueberry muffins, which I posted the recipe to some seven and a half years ago.
When I did post that recipe, there was an extra step I never use that was omitted. This step was specifically for my sister. She was always a little pickier of an eater than I was, and one of her little oddities, long since outgrown, was that she didn't really care for cooked blueberries for some reason, which means that she didn't like blueberry muffins. To combat this, before she put the blueberries into the batter my mother would take a portion of the dough and put it into a small muffin sized oven-safe bowl. This would bake alongside the muffin tins and would be exclusively for my sister's consumption. Now that I think about it, this may be the most my mother ever bent her menu to accommodate our food preferences.
I love blueberry muffins, so I've never once used that extra step in my own baking, and let me tell you, I make blueberry muffins a lot, and not just for breakfast. My Aunt Joanne has a gigantic blueberry patch on her property in western New York, and bags of frozen blueberries turn up at my house with some regularity. Most of them get turned into muffins. I also won't hesitate to use store bought blueberries (fresh or frozen) as needed. I particularly like them when they are fresh out of the oven with a pat of butter on them, but they are also good the next day. I'm not sure a batch has ever lasted longer than that at my house, so I guess I can't vouch for the quality beyond 24 hours.
On the weekends, breakfast was a different story. The range of options varied by time and inclination, but in my retrospective opinion the absolute best breakfast my mother made was homemade blueberry muffins, which I posted the recipe to some seven and a half years ago.
When I did post that recipe, there was an extra step I never use that was omitted. This step was specifically for my sister. She was always a little pickier of an eater than I was, and one of her little oddities, long since outgrown, was that she didn't really care for cooked blueberries for some reason, which means that she didn't like blueberry muffins. To combat this, before she put the blueberries into the batter my mother would take a portion of the dough and put it into a small muffin sized oven-safe bowl. This would bake alongside the muffin tins and would be exclusively for my sister's consumption. Now that I think about it, this may be the most my mother ever bent her menu to accommodate our food preferences.
I love blueberry muffins, so I've never once used that extra step in my own baking, and let me tell you, I make blueberry muffins a lot, and not just for breakfast. My Aunt Joanne has a gigantic blueberry patch on her property in western New York, and bags of frozen blueberries turn up at my house with some regularity. Most of them get turned into muffins. I also won't hesitate to use store bought blueberries (fresh or frozen) as needed. I particularly like them when they are fresh out of the oven with a pat of butter on them, but they are also good the next day. I'm not sure a batch has ever lasted longer than that at my house, so I guess I can't vouch for the quality beyond 24 hours.