Blueberry Muffins

I love ‘going down to the basics’ with everything I do in life. It makes any issue I face, a little less intimidating. It’s actually been drilled into my life ever since childhood. I remember gruelling lessons in math with my dad, where I’d earn a tap on my head for forgetting the basics. 

“How did you get this number from?” he’d ask. “You didn’t pull it out of the air, where are the steps?”

Worse were lessons from my grandfather over the Summer holidays in Palakkad, where the heat would be sweltering and all I would want to do was explore their super long, mini-forest in their backyard, but I had to sit with him and go over the math textbook that I had vowed never to touch after the final exams. I now know that all he wanted to do was learn again with me. After he passed away, my family and I were packing up his things and we found so many of my math textbooks and his workbooks (with meticulous notes and steps) arranged neatly in his closet. 

At my first job, my boss was an old-school, strict authoritarian who was hard to like, but the reward for sticking out on a job like that was that he was a great teacher. The lessons I learnt about ‘going-back-to-the-basics’ have stuck with me all through my legal career. 

“What does the bare Act say?” he’d always ask. 

It’s always easy to get swayed by the many different opinions and interpretations when trying to understand the law. 

“There are so many precedents set by the courts, but before we dive into what the court says, we need to narrow our view and understand what the Act says, how the framers meant it,” he used to say.

And if ever I started a sentence with ‘I found it on the internet’ or if he even caught me on Google, I’d be hearing for the next two hours about how books are the basics and not the internet. 

That is why I love cooking and baking so much. Once you understand how vegetables, dairy, spices and the many different ingredients are cooked and how they react to each other, it becomes fun trying to mix and match them into different dishes. And boy, do I love understanding food. I even take notes like an excited school girl in the front-bench, always lifting her hand much to the annoyance of her classmates. 

I learnt how to cook from a young age, from my mother, my grandfathers, and my grandmother, but I knew absolutely nothing about baking until I came to graduate school and lived in with my first oven. One of the people who helped me (and continues to, everyday) understand the basics of baking is Sally’s Baking Addiction. She explains each of her recipes so well, especially the science behind using each ingredient, that it is hard not to get it just right. I attribute many happy days and midnights of exploring the world of baking thanks to her tantalising recipes.

I remember being so excited to see her book on the kitchen shelf of one of my close friends who is also a lawyer-turned-baker.

“I know her and I love her!” I exclaimed.

“Me too!”

It was like a testament to our friendship.

We kept talking about her recipes, so much so that we craved something sweet, and talked ourselves into spending the afternoon baking.

Anytime I want to try something new, I eventually arrive at Sally’s page to best understand the concept. That is how I ended up with these incredibly soft blueberry muffins with a streusel topping that is sure to invite you by your nose to the breakfast party.

I was a baking novice the first time I tried making these muffins and if I recall correctly, with a simple crumb topping. I was so fascinated that I could make breakfast treats at home. More so, because after my first encounter with muffins sold in the stores and bakeries in the US, it felt nice not to be intimidated by the size of my food. The muffin was soft, but just a little dense with all the blueberries in it. The salty sweet crumb topping and the burst of berries with each bite, made it my favourite breakfast option. 

When I wanted to make the same muffins again, I came across one of Sally’s favourite recipes for a blueberry muffin with streusel topping that looked to die for, making me shelve the old recipe for the time period. Time for a change and (circumstantial) substitutions. 

Living in the pandemic, if you have visited the supermarket, you’d know that it’s no longer toilet paper rolls shelves that are empty, but flour. My regular place was out for almost a month and I was on my last, itty bit of flour, so I had two choices, the atta (whole wheat flour) that I keep around for making chapatis, or almond flour.

From the almond cupcakes that I make, I know that if I make the muffins with just almond flour, it might be light as air, but will not be able to withstand the weight of the berries. But, if I make it completely with atta, I might just end up with a heavy, dense muffin that has to be washed down with milk. This meant combining the two to get a good balance. The original Sally’s recipe calls for 1 and 3/4th cups of all-purpose flour, I substituted this with 1 cup of atta and 3/4th cup of almond flour and the result was one of the best muffins that I’ve ever tasted! Light, fluffy, not too sweet, nutty, crunchy, with bursts of blueberry. Man, oh man!

The streusel topping is a simple mix of brown sugar, cinnamon powder, and your favourite nuts. I chose pecans, and lots of them! When the sugar melts on top, it makes the edges of the muffin so crunchy, contrasting it’s soft and fluffy inside. It’s actually an explosion of flavours and textures, perfect to kick start your day. 

The trick to a good, tall muffin according to Sally are three things, a thick batter, filling the muffin holder/lining all the way to the top, and baking them on high heat for the first five minutes to raise them and then to lower the temperature to bake them without burning the bottoms.

So the making of these muffins are quite simple, combine all the dry ingredients in one bowl, combine all the wet ingredients (except the milk) in a separate bowl, add the wet ingredients to the dry, using milk as a binder, fold in the blueberries and there you have the muffin batter. Spoon this into your muffin holders, all the way to the top. Sprinkle on the streusel and in the oven it goes.

At 425F for the first five minutes and then at 350F for 20 mins. Check with a toothpick to see if it is completely cooked before removing from the oven. The timing might differ by a couple of minutes depending upon your oven. Also, If you are using muffin liners, I’d recommend taking them off and allowing the muffins to rest for a few minutes on a wire rack, else the condensation tends to make the bottom soggy. 

Enjoy them warm with your morning cup of tea. 

AuthorPriyanka SivaramakrishnanDifficultyBeginner