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Blueberry Muffins
1 cup fresh blueberries 2 tablespoons butter 2 tablespoons sugar 3/4 cup milk 2 cups sifted flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 4 teaspoons baking powder Sift the baking powder, flour and salt together. Cream the butter and sugar. Add the milk and the dry ingredients alternately. At the last fold in the blueberries.
A plain, eggless muffin batter of the sort that filled American cookbooks before creaming and folding gave way to the two-bowl method. The original omits oven heat, time and pan, so those need supplying.
- Oven and timeThe recipe gives no oven heat, time or pan. Bake at 400F for 20 to 25 minutes, until the tops spring back and a skewer comes out clean.
- Yield and panThe quantities fill roughly 10 to 12 standard muffin cups, generously greased or lined. Fill each about two-thirds full.
- Baking powderFour teaspoons to two cups of flour is high by modern standards, roughly double the usual ratio. With a current double-acting brand, 2 to 2 1/2 teaspoons gives a better rise and avoids a metallic aftertaste.
- No eggThe batter contains no egg, though whether that was intended or dropped in printing cannot be told from the page. Eggless batters are more fragile, so the muffins are best eaten the day they are made.
- MixingCreaming only 2 tablespoons of butter with 2 tablespoons of sugar gives very little to work with; a fork in a bowl is enough. Add milk and dry ingredients alternately and stop the moment the flour disappears, or the crumb turns tough and tunnelled.
- The blueberriesFold them in last and barely, as directed. Tossing them in a spoonful of the measured flour first keeps them suspended rather than sunk. Frozen berries work if added still frozen, though the batter will streak.
- SweetnessTwo tablespoons of sugar makes a bread rather than a cake. If you expect a modern bakery muffin, increase to 1/3 to 1/2 cup, and sprinkle the tops with coarse sugar before baking.
- Flour"Sifted flour" means measured after sifting, which is lighter than a scooped cup. Reckon nearer 7 ounces of all-purpose flour for the two cups than 8.
Blueberry muffins are older and thoroughly American, descended from the huckleberry and blueberry breads of New England, where the wild low-bush berry was gathered rather than bought — nineteenth-century books often use "huckleberry" and "blueberry" interchangeably in such recipes. The eggless, barely sweetened batter here reflects both frugality and an understanding of a muffin as a breakfast bread, closer to a biscuit than to a cake.