Lemon Blueberry Goodness

I have a terrible habit of collecting recipes from magazines or the Internet and then never actually making them.  Silly I know but I've probably got 100 recipes waiting to be tried out right now.  They just sound so good in the moment so I have keep them.  I can't tell you how many brownie recipes I have and usually I make brownies from a box.  Why do I need all those brownie recipes anyway?  I can't help myself though.

So yesterday I wanted to have some kind of bread for dinner and only had about 1/2 hour to make it.  I have several go to recipes like Danish scones, whole wheat muffins or baking powder biscuits I would normally use in such a situation but I decided to try out one of the unused recipes instead.  I picked up Lemon-Blueberry Muffins and decided to give it a shot.  Oh. My. Lemon-blueberry goodness!  Why did I wait so long to try this out?  They were so good.  Light, fluffy, and refreshing.  So I decided I'd share the recipe.  Unfortunately, I can't remember where I picked up the recipe to give credit where credit is due.  All I can say is someone was a genius.  I'm going to write the recipe out as it was originally written but then add what I did differently this time and would do differently next time.

Lemon-Blueberry Muffins

2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
6 Tbsp cold margarine or butter
1 egg
2/3 cup milk
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp grated lemon rind
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup blueberries

Mix first 4 ingredients in large bowl.  Cut in butter until you have fine crumbs.
Beat together next 5 ingredients and add to flour mixture. Fold in blueberries. Spoon into muffin cups.

Topping:
2Tbsp flour
2 Tbsp sugar
2 Tbsp melted butter
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Mix together and put on muffin batter.  Bake 400* for 20 minutes. Serve warm.
Or recipe makes 1 loaf 9x5x3 pan. Bake at 350* for 1 hour.

I don't usually have fresh lemons on hand but I happened to have one so I used that instead of bottled lemon juice.  And I never like dried lemon rind so I typically omit that from a recipe but since I had fresh I used it for both the juice and the rind and I think it made a HUGE difference.  Probably still be good with bottled lemon but the fresh was divine.  I can't eat dairy products so I used a soy based margarine and soy milk.  I have started adding just a little imitation butter flavor to make the margarine taste better (the company changed their recipe to make it healthier and the result was margarine that tastes like plastic. :P But I don't have alternatives so the butter flavor helps.)

Next time I would add more blueberries. Maybe 1 1/2 or 2 cups.  I used fresh berries but frozen would work too. I would also make a bigger batch of the topping and cut in the margarine instead of melting it.  The melted margarine made it a paste and that was difficult to put on the batter so the result was a clump of topping in one area but not across the entire top of the muffin.  If you cut in the margarine you will be able to sprinkle the topping over the top. 

And the last change I would make is to double the recipe!  Twice the goodness to be eaten!
Happy baking! And happier eating!!



Update: I made another batch today.  A double batch!  Still just as yummy.  But I found that when I cut in the margarine for the topping it went a lot farther so I'm not entirely sure that you need to make more than the recipe when done that way.  I made extra this time and was putting on extra amounts to use it up.  And I've decided that the muffin itself is so good that it may not even need the topping at all.  I didn't try it that way though so don't quote me on that one.

My son started eating this batch and said he was going to eat the entire thing because he has no self control.  When I asked him to show some restraint he responded with, "Mom, when you give a moose a muffin..."  Ha ha.  Yay for children's literature!