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Blueberry or Huckleberry Muffins
1/4 CUP BUTTER 1/2 CUP SUGAR 2 EGGS, SEPARATED 1/2 CUP EVAPORATED MILK 11/4 CUP FLOUR I 2 TEASPOONS BAKING POWDER 1/2 TEASPOON SALT I CUP BLUEBERRIES Cream butter. Gradually add sugar, and cream together. Add well-beaten egg yolks and evaporated milk. Beat well. Sift flour, baking powder, and salt together, add berries, and carefully combine the mixtures. Fold in beaten egg whites. Bake 25-30 minutes in buttered muffin pans, at 375°.
A straightforward creamed-butter muffin lifted with beaten egg whites rather than the modern quick-bread stir. The method rewards a light hand at the end.
- The flour quantity is unclearThe line reads as 1 1/4 cups, which looks thin against 2 teaspoons baking powder, two eggs and 1/2 cup evaporated milk. Treat it as a possible transcription error: if the batter pours rather than mounds, add more flour.
- Evaporated milkUse it straight from the can, undiluted. It is not condensed milk, which is sweetened and would push this well past dessert.
- Berries in the dry mixThe recipe adds the blueberries to the sifted flour, baking powder and salt before combining. The flour coating is commonly held to help keep them suspended rather than sinking; in any case, follow the order as written.
- Folding, not beatingOnce flour meets the wet mixture, combine only until no dry streaks remain, then fold the whites in with a spatula in a few strokes. Overworking here gives tunnels and a tough crumb.
- Oven375°F is stated and correct. Bake in the middle of the oven; if you are working from a Dutch oven or reflector oven outdoors, aim for the same figure and rotate the pan once.
- YieldThe recipe gives none; expect roughly nine to twelve muffins depending on how the flour quantity is resolved. They are best within a few hours of baking.
- Frozen berriesFrozen blueberries work if added still frozen and tossed in the flour. Thawed ones bleed and turn the crumb grey-purple.
Blueberries and huckleberries are treated here as interchangeable. 'Huckleberry' is a loose folk name applied to several wild fruits, including true Gaylussacia species with their gritty seeds and, in much of the West, wild Vaccinium that is botanically a blueberry. Evaporated milk is called for rather than fresh; canned milk kept without ice and travelled well. The separated-egg method, with whites whipped and folded in for lift, is older than the all-in-one muffin technique most recipes use now.