Lemon-Sugar Blueberry Muffins

I love fresh baked muffins. Like seriously love them. If I also didn't love store bought cereal so much I'd probably have homemade muffins once a week. But my love for cereal is currently too great to let all those yummy fresh muffins take over my kitchen, maybe one day though.

As far as the types of muffins I make and love... that would be basically all of them. I don't discriminate when it comes to muffins. Especially blueberry muffins. The basic blueberry muffin is great because you can eat it all on it's own and it's delicious. But it is a great pallet for branching out and adding other goodies to it.

I worked at a bakery in high school as the weekend baker. Every other Saturday and Sunday I would wake up at 5:30 in the morning and make my way to work and bake all of the goodies we offered. Including the more gooey and biggest cinnamon rolls ever, sweet rolls, scones, cookies and my personal favorite, muffins. What I loved most about making the muffins was the fact that I had the ability to play around with all the muffin recipes. Everyone loved when I would bake the blueberry muffins because I would sprinkle coarse sugar on top so that the muffin tops got a nice sugary crusty top on them.  When I saw this recipe I was immediately transported to my time as a baker and made these the next day. They are a great muffin that stayed moist for days after they were fresh... Which if you ask me is super important for muffins so that you can enjoy them for the rest of the week.

Lemon-Sugar Blueberry Muffins
(Recipe from Tracy's Culinary Adventures)


Lemon-Sugar Topping:
1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp. fresh lemon zest

Muffins:
2 cups fresh blueberries
1 1/8 cups sugar, plus 1 teaspoon
2 1/2 cups flour
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
2 large eggs, room temperature
4 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup buttermilk
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

To make topping:
Combine lemon zest and sugar in a small bowl and rub together with fingertips until fragrant. Set aside.

To make muffins:
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F with the rack in the upper third. Line muffin tin with muffin liners and spray with non-stick cooking spray.

Combine half of the blueberries (1 cup) along with 1 tsp. of sugar in a small saucepan. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, mashing berries with a masher and stirring frequently. Continue cooking until berries break down and the mixture is a thick jam-like consistency. Transfer to a bowl and set aside to cool to room temperature.

In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt together. In a different large bowl, stir together 1 1/8 cups sugar and eggs until well combined. Whisk in butter and oil until combined. Add buttermilk and vanilla and stir until incorporated. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients along with last half of the blueberries, gently fold in just until moistened. Batter will be lumpy, don't worry about it. Don't over mix.

Divide batter evenly among prepared muffin wells, making sure each is full (the recipe is supposed to make an even dozen muffins but I ended up with about 15). Add one teaspoon of the cooled blueberry mixture to the center of each filled well. Use a toothpick or knife or whatever to gently swirl jam mixture into batter.

Sprinkle each with prepared lemon sugar

Bake for 17-20 minutes or until muffin tops are golden and spring back when pressed gentle. Transfer puffin pan to wire rack and cool for 5 minutes. Remove from muffin tin to cool completely.