Blueberry Streusel Muffins

For as long as I remember, I am not a muffin person, except for my trusty banana muffins (which I am still making in regular basis, a lot). Nothing is really wrong with it, I just thought that they are usually firm and dense, and it makes me want to chug a glass of water after.

But here I am posting another muffin recipe, the second muffin recipe I've ever posted since I've started baking. This muffin recipe was created as a result of desperation. Sophie attends a Christian program every Wednesday night, and it was her turn to bring snacks that week for 20 kids. It was a busy time and with me preparing the upcoming international trip for the whole family, the snack duty got forgotten, until the night before, when I see an empty snack bucket that she brought home the week before.

I thought oh, I'll just go to the store in the morning to get something. You see, we only have one car, so during the day weekday, I don't have a car unless I have somewhere important I need to go to and so I will take Michael to work bringing the two kids. It's not ideal because I don't actually prefer going anywhere with the two kids by myself, and it has never caused a big problem before, just inconvenient sometimes.

Well, either I woke up not early enough, or Mike has a morning meeting I didn't know about, or whatever it was, I couldn't make it to the store, and Sophie will get picked up before Mike gets home. I had to come up with something, because showing up with empty snack bucket was clearly not an option. I don't normally keep many store-bought snacks in the house, and even if I do, not for 20 kids.

I opened my fridge, scanning what I had on hand. I probably kept opening and closing it 5x-10x within a span of 30 minutes, I don't know why, maybe hoping that somehow, something different magically appeared. I saw a carton of buttermilk I bought the other day to make chicken tenders, and I always have eggs on hand. I thought I surely can make something with it. I opened the freezer and saw that I had a couple different fruits I froze during summer, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries. Then I had the brightest idea to make blueberry muffins! I made banana chocolate muffins for the previous snack duty and received raved feedback from the happy kids and helpers, so hopefully they will appreciate this too.

Now the problem is, the last time I made blueberry muffins was probably 10 years ago, using Ina Garten's recipe. And while it's good while it's warm, I remember not so fond of it after it cooled down because again, I found it too dense for my liking. So I started writing down a recipe from scratch on a piece of paper to see if I can come up with something better.

I decided to put streusel on top, as I remember bakery-style muffins normally has streusel on top (?) and plus, I am a big fan of crunchy texture!

It made exactly 20 muffins! and when I checked the tag again on the snack bucket, it said "Please bring snacks for 20 people"! So no, I couldn't take one to try. All I care was, was it still moist and soft when it cooled? The muffins came out of the oven literally 20 minutes before Sophie was picked up so I hurried and woke her up, bathed, and got her ready, and into the box the muffins went, warm and all. I only sampled the crumbs. So, I sent Sophie with them anyway. She was so proud of them, kept saying how she was going to tell her friends that my mom made it (HAHA.. talking about pressure).

I was anxious waiting for her to come back (more like scared honestly), hoping they were at least decent. She came back and said "Mama, the muffins were a hit!" (not sure where she learned that word from and not sure if she actually knows what it meant), but I was a bit relieved. She actually came back with her half-eaten muffin that she couldn't finish, so I took a bite or two and I was pleasantly surprised.

I made them again in the morning because I was so curious, tweaking the proportions slightly based on my taste-test the night before and I came up with what I thought was the perfect blueberry muffins (in my humble opinion at least)! Granted, I am not an expert at all in the muffin area, nor I have tried a lot of blueberry muffin to compare, so take it with a grain of salt, but if it passes my picky taste for muffins, then it is good.



I shared the second batch with the rest of the family and they gave two thumbs up. One of my nieces is actually a helper in Sophie's class so she was there when Sophie brought the muffins. She told me that one of the other helpers asked her if she could ask me for the recipe because she said it was the best blueberry muffin she's ever had! Well, if that's not enough to make my head slightly bigger, I don't know what is. So here it is.

You can use either fresh or frozen blueberries. I used frozen because that's what I had on hand, no need to thaw them first and don't fold them too much as the purple color will bleed into the batter. I used maybe about 1 1/4 cups of blueberries, but you can use more or less depending on your taste. Hope you like it! Feel free to tag me on @the.bs.life if you make any of my recipes, I would LOVE to see them!

Blueberry Streusel Muffins
Yield: 20 muffins or so

Dry Ingredients:

260g all-purpose flour

25g whole milk powder (I like milky taste in my baked goods, but you can substitute it with more flour or even cornstarch to make the cake lighter, or even use cake flour for the whole 285g)
1.5 tsp baking powder

0.5 tsp baking soda

¼ tsp kosher salt

150g sugar

1 lemon zest (optional)

Wet Ingredients:

2 eggs

1 cup buttermilk

½ cup vegetable oil

1.5 tsp vanilla extract

1-1.5 cups blueberries + a bit of flour

Streusel:

1 stick of butter

¼ cup sugar

¼ cup brown sugar

1 cup all-purpose flour

optional add-on: cinnamon

• Combine the wet and dry ingredients separately.
  Note: I like to mix the wet ingredients first in a bowl. Add sugar, then put a sieve on top and put all of the dry ingredients on top and sift it right in the wet ingredients. Saves me a bowl to wash. I do this with my banana muffin too.
• Add the dry ingredients and mix until combined, do not overmix.
• Toss the fresh/frozen blueberries with a little bit of flour, coating them. Then add it to the muffin mixture (just the blueberries, leave out the leftover flour)
• Fold it gently as not to bruise the blueberries too much, and again, don't overmix
• Fill muffin liners/pans 2/3rd full and add heaping mounds of streusel (I like a lot of it). Don't be skimpy on this. As the muffins bake and rises, the surface area of the muffin will get larger and the butter in the streusel will melt
• Bake at 400F 20-25mnts (mine took about 23 minutes).
• Best served immediately because the streusel is still crunchy, but it will still be as good and moist even after a few days covered in airtight container or zip-top bags.