VMBURNS: I'm currently working on my Baker Street Mystery book #6 and blueberries play a big role in this book. So, I need to test one of my recipes. I've made baked goods with blueberries before, but I am a bit heavy handed with my mixing, which doesn't work well with blueberries. Pretty much everything I've baked has come out blue. If you burst the berries, your baked goods will be blue. They still taste good, but the color change isn't appealing. A little bit of blue is unavoidable. Some of the berries will burst during the baking process, but my goal was to minimize the color bleed. So, this was my challenge. DON'T BREAK THE BERRIES!
For the first time EVER, my blueberries remained in tact.
BLUEBERRY MUFFINS
Ingredients
- 2/3 Cup of sugar, plus 2 Tablespoons for the top
- 1 large egg
- 1/3 Cup milk
- ½ Cup melted butter
- 1 ½ Teaspoons Vanilla
- 1 ¼ Cup flour
- 1 Teaspoon Baking powder
- ¼ Teaspoon salt
- ½ Cup Sour Cream
- 1 Cup fresh blueberries
InSTRUCTIONS
- Preheat oven to 375*F. Lighly grease a muffin tin and insert muffin liners.
- Combine sugar, egg, butter, milk, and vanilla in a bowl. Stir until well combined.
- Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt in a separate bowl, then slowly add the flour mixture to the wet. Stir to combine, but don’t overmix.
- Stir in the sour cream and GENTLY fold in the blueberries.
- Pour the mixture into the prepared muffin pan, and sprinkle the tablespoon of sugar over the tops.
- Bake for approximately 25-30 minutes. Remove when a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
- READERS: What's your favorite blueberry baked good? Do you like muffins, pies, scones? Do yours come out blue? Or, are you gentler when mixing than I am? It's okay. You can tell me. It won't hurt my feelings if I'm the only one with blue food. Let me know in the comments below. Leave your email address to be included in the drawing.
MURDER AT FIRST SLICE (ARC)
As Maddy’s wedding day approaches, friends and family descend on the little town of New Bison, Michigan, to celebrate—so much so that Maddy wonders if there might be another happily-ever-after in store for her widowed father and innkeeper Mrs. Law. Unfortunately, she also has to deal with an unhappy couple: feuding cousins Hannah and Dorothy, who haven’t spoken in decades. Maddy can only hope the spectacular wedding cake crafted by her head baker doesn’t wind up as ammunition in a food fight.
But she doesn’t have to wait long for a wedding disaster to strike. When the imperious Dorothy crashes the rehearsal dinner—with several uninvited guests in tow—and starts battering everyone with constant complaints, the drama reaches reality-show levels. And the next day, Dorothy is dead . . . with Hannah standing over the body, bloody rolling pin in hand.
Nobody in town believes Miss Hannah could commit murder. But a detective newly relocated from New York doesn’t know the sweet, memory-challenged Hannah the way the locals do—and the evidence seems open-and-shut as an oven. Now, with her sous-sleuths the Baker Street Irregulars, the bride-to-be is busy digging into Dorothy’s past to catch a killer before she cuts the cake . . .
