When my kids were in daycare, for Mother’s Day there would be “muffins for mom” and for Father’s Day there would be “Doughnuts for Dad”.  I was so jealous of “Dad”.  The moms would get these large, dense, tasteless, mass produced muffins that sat in packaging for weeks.  Dads would get doughnuts fresh from a local shop. So not the same!

The only muffins I really remember growing up were blueberry.  I guess there were other flavors, but I don’t recall having them.  Muffins had their heyday in the 1990s.  There was an entire Seinfeld episode dedicated to the best part of the muffin:  the top.  Thanks to that episode, you can buy a muffin top pan.  Who would possibly want those terrible muffin stumps?  The tops were clearly the best part!!  I love Seinfeld.

Muffin flavors exploded, and there was a bit of a muffin craze.  No different than the cupcake phase now.   Can that be over now?  No one looks good eating a cupcake.  It’s messy, you get frosting everywhere, and those little things are expensive!  I’m really not a big fan. But, I digress.

As everyone has a muffin tin, there should be no “special equipment” required to execute this recipe.  Most people now probably make cupcakes out of their “muffin pans”, but I like the old standby of blueberry muffins.  Simple, elegant, and well, it’s got to be good for you, there’s blueberries in it!

This recipe is allegedly based on a Martha Stewart Recipe.   The blueberry recipe currently listed on her webpage is loaded with comments asking where the old blueberry recipe went. One of the commenters kindly put the more popular “old” recipe up.  I used that one as a base for the following recipe.  If the recipe was so good that people were willing to print it and save it, then comment on Martha’s site about it on another recipe’s webpage, it was good enough for me!  A purloined recipe!  Quite the scandal!

As you can guess, it’s made two ways.  One for the boy and one for the girl.   She wouldn’t touch blueberries for anything.

Muffins, two ways

2 cups of all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup whole milk

Blueberry Version (double if you aren’t making chocolate chip muffins)
1 cup of blueberries
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Chocolate Chip Version (double if you aren’t making blueberry muffins)
1 cup bittersweet chocolate chips

Topping
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Preheat oven to 375 Degrees Fahrenheit. Line a muffin tin with baking cups or liners.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt in a small mixing bowl. Set aside.

Cream together the butter and the sugar in a large mixing bowl, until fluffy. About 3 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time until combined. Add vanilla and milk until combined.

Take 1 teaspoon of the flour mixture and use to coat the blueberries.

Using a wooden spoon, slowly stir the remaining flour mixture into the wet ingredients. Divide the batter in two. Add the lemon zest, lemon juice and blueberries to one part of the batter and the chocolate chips to the other part.

Add the batter to the muffin tin. Mix together the sugar and nutmeg and sprinkle on top of each muffin. If you have too much batter for 12 muffins, bake a second batch. I got 14 muffins out of mine.

Bake until the tops of the muffins start to brown and a toothpick comes out clean.