Day 70: National Blueberry Muffin Day

I was so glad that National Blueberry Muffin Day happened to occur on a Saturday! During the week, I don't wake up early enough to bake breakfast. But this morning, I was able to sleep in, and then get up and make muffins for breakfast.  On Saturdays, I am usually up before the rest of my family. This gives me time to enjoy the peace and quiet before my rowdy boys get up and going! I really enjoyed being in the kitchen first thing this morning, just me and the muffins, until Camdyn decided he smelled something good and showed up in the kitchen to see what it was. 

The muffin recipe makes 1 dozen, so I made half of them blueberry for me and Thomas and the other half chocolate chip for the boys. I used a recipe from the Betty Crocker cookbook that I have mentioned before.  It is a moist muffin with the right mixture of fluffy yet dense texture.

I definitely like muffins, yet I just don't eat them often because they don't keep me feeling full and they are usually high in calories. The good thing about having them for breakfast on Saturday is that I don't eat breakfast until 9:00 or 9:30, so lunchtime isn't too far away. This morning, I had a blueberry muffin with a bowl of sliced strawberries and a mug of hot cocoa - a 270 calorie breakfast.

Blueberry Muffins

From: Betty Crocker

Yield: 1 dozen muffins / 163 calories each

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup milk (I used 1%)
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 large egg
• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Grease bottoms only of 12 medium muffin cups with cooking spray.
2. In a large bowl, beat milk, oil and egg with wire whisk until well mixed.  Stir in flour, sugar, baking powder and salt all at once just until flour is moistened (batter will be lumpy). Fold in blueberries. Divide batter evenly among muffin cups.
3. Bake 15 minutes or until golden brown. Let stand for 5 minutes then remove from pan to wire rack to cool, or serve warm if desired.

Additional info:

• Never over mix batter for muffins. Over mixing causes muffins to be dry. Muffins that were over mixed will have peaked tops.
• The perfect muffin has a slightly rounded top.
• I used frozen blueberries and cut them in half and some in fourths.  I don't like huge chunks of blueberries, so these were the perfect size.
• You can replace the 1 cup of blueberries for chocolate chips.  I used Ghiradelli milk chocolate chips. These are the only kind I buy - they are fabulous! They are bigger than the average chocolate chip and were excellent in these muffins!