Blueberry Muffins Extraordinaire

I made these a few weeks ago. I made them the very next day to take to my visiting teaching ladies. I had to make the second batch because I ate too many from the first batch to share. From the two batches I ate 8 muffins. I offer this confession of an over-indulgent muffin eater to demonstrate the accuracy of this recipe's title/description. The next week I made a birthday cake for myself. As I ate the cake, I had wished that I had skipped the cake and made another batch of muffins for myself instead. Enjoy!


Lemon-Sugar Topping: (I doubled this topping so I wouldn't have to skimp on it when distributing among the muffins)

Ingredients:

1/3 cup sugar
zest from one lemon or orange

Directions:

For the topping, stir together sugar and lemon zest in a small bowl and set aside.


Muffins:


Ingredients:

2 cups frozen blueberries
1 1/8 cups plus 1 tablespoon sugar
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
4 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled slightly
1/4 cup oil
1 cup buttermilk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray a standard muffin tin with nonstick cooking spray. Rinse one cup frozen berries under cold water and spread on a double layer of paper towels to dry well. Bring remaining one cup berries and 1 teaspoon sugar to simmer in a small saucepan over medium heat. Cook, mashing berries with a spoon, stirring frequently until the berries have broken down and the mixture is thickened and reduced to about 1/3 cup, about 6-8 minutes. Transfer to a small bowl and cool to room temperature, about 10 to 15 minutes.

Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a large bowl. Toss the berries that have dried on the paper towels in with the flour mixture. Whisk remaining 1 1/8 cups sugar and eggs together in a medium bowl until thick. Slowly whisk in the butter and oil until combined. Whisk in the buttermilk and vanilla until combined. Using a rubber spatula, fold egg mixture into flour mixture until just moistened. The batter will be lumpy with a few dry spots of flour – don’t overmix.

Fill the muffin cups until they are about 3/4 full. Spoon a teaspoon of cooked berry mixture into the center of each mound of batter. Using a skewer (or a chopstick), gently swirl the berry filling into the batter using a figure eight motion. Sprinkle lemon sugar evenly over the muffins.
Bake until the top of the muffins are golden and just firm, 17-18 minutes. Cool muffins in the muffin tin for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack and cool 5 minutes before serving.
Recipe adapted from Mel's Kitchen Cafe recipe blog:
http://www.melskitchencafe.com/2009/04/lemon-sugar-crusted-blueberry-muffins.html