Recipe: Alton Brown’s Blueberry Muffins

Estimated Cost:  $10.00

Prep Time:  15 minutes

Baking Time:  20 minutes

Serves:  12

I “lifted” this recipe from my all-time favorite culinary-hero, Alton Brown.  Specifically it’s from my favorite book Brown’s authored, “I’m Just Here for More Food“, which I highly recommend to anyone just learning to bake or trying to up their baking game.  The books subtitle pretty much sums it up:
“food x mixing + heat = baking“.  I thought it only fair that I use Brown’s actual introduction to the recipe.

“If you walk into a Starbu… um, a coffee place these days and order a muffin, what you’ll get will be something between a carrot cake and a classic cupcake – that’s not a real muffin. Real muffins should be coarser and less sweet than a cake, and although they contain enough fat to be tender, I wouldn’t exactly call them moist. I would, however, call them delicious.”

The Dry Goods:
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
pinch salt

The Wet Goods:
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 lg. egg
1 lg. egg yolk
1 cup plain yogurt

The Extras:
1 1/2 cups blueberries

1. Place the oven rack in the 2nd to top most position and preheat the oven to 375°F.

2. Grease and lightly flour your muffin tins (you will be making 12 total muffins).

3. Sift the Dry Works together in a large-mixing bowl. I like to combine all the Dry Works in the food processor bowl and pulse 3 or 4 times for sifting. Ensure they are mixed together well.

4. In a medium-bowl combine the Wet Works; whisk until well combined.

5. Make a crater in the middle of the Dry Works; pour Wet Works into crater. Mix by hand ONLY until combined. Do NOT over mix, this is key. Your batter is mixed as soon as the Wet and Dry Works are combined. Your batter will still have small clumps of flour mixture throughout – this is what you want. Fight the over-mixing demon with all the culinary courage you can muster!

6. Mix in the blueberries; mix only till combined.

7. Drop the batter into the prepared muffin pan(s). The cups should be full.

8. Bake for 18 – 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the bottom of a muffin comes out clean.

9. Remove from the oven and immediately turn the muffins (still in pan) on their sides so steam can escape the pans. Skip this step and you will more then likely end up with mushy muffin bottoms.

10. Serve immediately or store in an airtight container for up to a week or until they taste gross, smell bad, or grow fur.

Mike’s comments:

Mr. Brown originally created this recipe to be a “muffin template”. You can swap out the blueberries with 1-2 cups of any of what he calls “bits and pieces”. For example: nuts, berries, or chocolate chips. He does warn, however, no more then 1 cup of chips.

Alton Brown is the MAN. Check out his website, I think he’s brilliant and highly entertaining.

http://altonbrown.com/