Friday, January 22, 2021

Best Blueberry Muffins

These are the blueberry muffins we make and serve for our Airbnb breakfasts—originally dubbed as "Frank's Blueberry Muffins" on the Trader Joe's website.

Elanore accidentally made one half dozen "wrong" one day—by putting them in our Breville Smart Oven Pro toaster oven with the oven rack in the middle position instead of the bottom ("bake") position—and they turned out very different: flat-topped, and with the top kinda crispy and the bottom the texture of fresh-out-of-the-oven pound cake. We found that we prefer them this way!

The "wrong" (really yummy!) one is pictured in the lower right corner of the photo to the left.

I'll update this if I ever figure out how to reliably duplicate the "mistake" in the regular oven!


4 C. all-purpose flour
2 Tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 C. sugar, plus more for sprinkling
3 large eggs, beaten
2 C. milk
2 sticks butter, melted
1 tsp. vanilla
2 C. blueberries (if frozen, do NOT thaw)

1) Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Grease muffin tins with cooking spray and set aside.

2) In a large bowl, combine first four ingredients and set aside.

3) In another large bowl, combine next four ingredients.

4) Add one-third of dry mixture to wet ingredients and stir to combine. Repeat until all is incorporated.

5) Gently fold in blueberries.

6) Scoop muffin batter into greased muffin pans. 
NOTE: If you make 12 muffins—like the original recipe says to—the cups will be very full, almost overflowing, but this is okay! It will work, but those muffins will be huge. We make 24 muffins out of this recipe, with the muffin tins filled 2/3-3/4 full. This makes "normal" sized muffins (see photo).

7) Lightly sprinkle muffin batter with sugar. (This recipe is not super sweet, so this sprinkling of sugar is a nice touch, and almost necessary to make the muffins sweet enough.)

8) Place pan on center rack of oven and bake 20-25 minutes, until muffins are golden.

9) Let cool 10 minutes, then gently removed muffins from tins.

10) Enjoy warm, with a generous slathering of butter. (This was the original recommendation. We like them plain, without any additional butter.)