Blueberry Muffin Bake-Off

Too many days in quarantine has me having a bake-off with myself. Things are going well here.

A while ago, someone I follow on Twitter (who I don’t know personally) posted a picture of her Grandma’s blueberry muffin recipe, saying they were the best muffins she’d ever had. Well, I’d already found a recipe on Pinterest that claimed to be the “best blueberry muffins” and they were different recipes, so clearly, someone was lying.

Enter The Great Blueberry Muffin Bake-Off. I made one batch of each muffin recipe to compare them. The only thing I changed was to make them as mini muffins, rather than regular muffins, since these are easier for the doctors, nurses, and staff at my mom’s clinic to grab quickly as a snack! The “grandma” recipe, as I’m calling it, didn’t include coarse sugar on top, but I added it anyway, since a) the first recipe called for it and I wanted them to be as similar as possible to compare them, and b) I firmly believe that every blueberry muffin should have coarse sugar on top. But other than the sugar and making them as mini muffins, I made each recipe exactly as stated.

Spoiler alert: grandma is always right.

The Pinterest recipe I used can be found here. And it wasn’t bad! These were good muffins. The other ones were just…better. These had a denser texture and had a strong pancake taste.

The “grandma” recipe, which I’ve attached below, was a little lighter in texture once cooked but a much thicker batter. They also browned a little more on top, which I liked.

Ingredients:

½ cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup buttermilk (if you don’t have buttermilk, you can use 1 tbsp of lemon juice plus enough milk to make 1 cup!)
1 ½ cup blueberries (coated in flour so they don’t sink to the bottom of the muffin)
Coarse sprinkling sugar or turbinado sugar for the top

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375° and line muffin tin with paper liners.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer (or large bowl if using a hand mixer), cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
3. Add eggs and vanilla, mix well.
4. Combine flour, baking powder, and baking soda in separate bowl.
5. Alternate adding dry ingredients and buttermilk into the batter until everything is combined—I usually do dry, wet, dry, wet, dry.
6. Fold blueberries into the batter using a spatula (a mixer will be too harsh for the berries).
7. Fill muffin cups almost to the top. Sprinkle very generously with sprinkling sugar. For regular size muffins, bake for 30 minutes. I made mini muffins and found 12 minutes was perfect.

Makes 24 regular-sized muffins or 48 mini muffins.