The Best Blueberry Muffins

Update: go ahead and make the sweet and rich version if you decide to make these. I know I'm heavy handed on the butter and was on the sugar last time as well. A friend made the light ones and thought they were a little dry. The extra egg in the richer version might help that.

Well at least these are some of the best blueberry muffins I've ever had. I've made them a number of times and always love them. The recipe comes from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. He mentions that he doesn't especially like sweet or rich muffins so this recipe is light on the sweet and rich. He does provide a recipe for the sweet and rich ones, which have three more tablespoons of butter, one more egg, and 3/4 cup of sugar rather than 1/2 cup. He also lists a variety of variations on the basic muffin recipe so that you could, for example, make banana nut muffins, spice muffins, coffee cake muffins, savory muffins, etc. You'll need the cookbook to make those, though, since I'm just listing the blueberry muffin recipe here.

3 tablespoons melted butter or canola or other neutral oil (plus some for greasing the muffin tin)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup of sugar
1/2 teaspoon of salt
3 tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest (optional, but I like it)
1 egg
1 cup milk, plus more if needed
1 cup blueberries

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Grease a standard 12 compartment muffin tin. Mix together the dry ingredients in a bowl. Beat together the egg, milk and butter or oil, and add the lemon zest to the wet ingredients. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour the wet ingredients into it. Using a large spoon or rubber spatula, combine the ingredients swiftly and add in the blueberries, stirring and folding rather than beating, and stopping as soon as all the dry ingredients are moistened. The batter should be lumpy, not smooth, and thick but quite moist. Add a little more milk if necessary. Spoon the batter into the muffin tins, filling them about two-thirds full and handling the batter as little as possible. Bake 20 to 30 minutes, or until the muffins are nicely browned and a toothpick inserted into the center of one of them comes out clean. Let rest for 5 minutes before taking them out of the tin. Serve warm. Yum. Don't forget a little pat of butter.