Best Blueberry Muffins?

In order to pep myself up for first day at the office in 2011, I decided to bake some muffins to snack at the office. I saw this Best Blueberry Muffins recipe on America’s Test Kitchen website and found it interesting the way the ATK folks spiked up the blueberry flavor in the muffin by adding concentrated blueberry jam, instead of adding more blueberries, to keep the blueberries from sinking to the bottom of the muffin.

Since I was feeling lazy, I used a store-bought blueberry jam instead of making my own – and boy oh boy, it was a bad decision. The jam that I bought was not concentrated enough so I had to increase the baking time by 2-3 more minutes per batch and it seemed to make the muffin texture to be more dense. So... unfortunately I can’t tell you whether these are the Best Blueberry Muffins or not – for now that is; I know for sure that I will make them again including the blueberry jam from scratch!


PS: I wonder if I can use this concentrate blueberry jam idea to spike up the blueberry flavor in Ina’s Blueberry Crumb Cake? What do you think?

Ingredients:

• 1 cup fresh blueberries, picked over
• 1 1/8 cups sugar
• 2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon table salt
• 2 large eggs
• 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter , melted and cooled slightly
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

For Blueberry jam:

• 1 cup fresh blueberries, picked over
• 1 teaspoon sugar

For Lemon-Sugar topping:

• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons finely grated zest from 1 lemon

Directions:

• Adjust oven rack to upper-middle position and heat oven to 425 degrees. Spray standard muffin tin with nonstick cooking spray.
  
• Bring 1 cup blueberries and 1 teaspoon sugar to simmer in small saucepan over medium heat. Cook, mashing berries with spoon several times and stirring frequently, until berries have broken down and mixture is thickened and reduced to 1/4 cup, about 6 minutes. Transfer to small bowl and cool to room temperature, 10 to 15 minutes.
• Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt together in large bowl. Whisk remaining 1 1/8 cups sugar and eggs together in medium bowl until thick and homogeneous, about 45 seconds. Slowly whisk in butter and oil until combined. Whisk in buttermilk and vanilla until combined. Using rubber spatula, fold egg mixture and remaining cup blueberries into flour mixture until just moistened. (Batter will be very lumpy with few spots of dry flour; do not overmix.)
• Divide batter equally among prepared muffin cups (batter should completely fill cups and mound slightly). Spoon teaspoon of cooked berry mixture into center of each mound of batter. Using chopstick or skewer, gently swirl berry filling into batter using figure-eight motion.
  
• Stir together sugar and lemon zest in small bowl until combined; set aside. Sprinkle lemon sugar evenly over muffins.
• Bake until muffin tops are golden and just firm, 17 to 19 minutes, rotating muffin tin from front to back halfway through baking time. Cool muffins in muffin tin for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire rack and cool 5 minutes before serving.