I’ve recently come to realize that the most fun way to bake is creating new recipes and new twists off of old recipes. Once you have a simple foundation of baking and know how different ingredients affect your baked goods, (such as sugar providing sweetness and caramelization; or flour providing structure) you can go off on your own and create unique recipes. I urge all of you to make a few twists to your recipe next time you bake. I’ll admit, that in the past I’ve been guilty of following recipes exactly. Over the past 2 years however, I have been slowly experimenting more and more with baking. Nowadays, I almost never follow recipes and instead I treat the kitchen as my chemistry lab. I like to play with proportions of ingredients and see what will happen if I combine certain flavors. Despite some of my kitchen failures caused by making up recipes as I go, I have invented many successful recipes that are now some of my go to ones.

This particular recipe I’m sharing is one of my most recent concoctions. I started off by flipping through my trusty Baking Bible: Baking Illustrated. I saw they had a recipe for blueberry muffins, which was exactly what I was in the mood for. Upon further review of the recipe it seemed tasty, but a little boring. I wanted to add some excitement to the tired old blueberry muffin stereotype. I knew that lemon and blueberry pair beautifully and the lemon would brighten up the whole muffin so I decided to experiment with a lemon-blueberry muffin. The first time I tried out my idea I simply added some lemon juice and zest to the batter. The extra liquid made the batter too wet and lemon really overpowered the whole muffin. My next thought was to do some sort of lemon sugar topping, but when I tried it the muffin wasn’t lemony enough and the sugar wouldn’t even stick to the cooked muffin tops. I thought about doing a glaze, but it would be way too heavy and sweet to go witht the muffin. Failures when creating a recipe are normal and it’s important to not get down on yourself. The good thing is that my failures were still tasty just not exactly what I was looking for. Luckily for me, the third time was the charm. My final recipe consists of a decadently moist muffin bursting with blueberries that is topped with a sweet and sour lemon syrup and finished with a bright lemon sugar.

Daniel

INGREDIENTS

For Muffins

• 10 ounces 2 cups unbleached) all-purpose flour
• 13 grams (1 tablespoon) baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon table salt
• 57 grams (1 large) egg
• 200 grams (1 cup) granulated sugar
• 56.5 grams (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
• 283 grams (1 1/4 cups) sour cream
• 170 grams (1 1/2 cups) frozen blueberries, preferably Wyman’s Wild Blueberries
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

For lemon Sugar Topping

• 57.5 grams (¼ cup) lemon juice
• 150 grams (¾) cup sugar
• Zest 2 lemons

DIRECTIONS

1. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350F degrees. Place paper muffin liners in 12 cup muffin tin. ProTip: Buy paper muffin liners that have a waxed finish.

2. Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt in medium bowl until combined.

3. Whisk egg in a large bowl until well-combined and light-colored, about 20 seconds. Add sugar, whisking vigorously until thick and homogenous, about a minute; add melted butter in 2 steps, whisking to combine after each addition. Add vanilla and the. add the sour cream in 2 steps, folding just to combine.

4. Add frozen berries to dry ingredients and gently toss to combine. ProTip: Be gentle with the berries so they don’t burst.

5. Add dry ingredients to sour cream mixture and fold with rubber spatula until batter comes together and berries are evenly distributed, 25 to 30 seconds (small spots of flour may remain and batter will be thick and lumpy). ProTip: Mix as little as possible to keep dough from getting tough and the berries from bleeding.

6. Use ice cream scoop to drop batter into greased muffin tin.

7. Bake until light golden brown and toothpick or skewer inserted into center of muffin comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes, rotating pan from front to back halfway through baking time.

8. Remove muffins from tin and cool.

9. Combine lemon juice and ¼ cup sugar in small saucepan and reduce until syrupy so it doesn’t slide of the muffin.

10 . Rub lemon zest into sugar.

11. Brush top of muffin with lemon syrup then sprinkle with lemon sugar.

© Julie de Lara and onemorebitedelara.com 2015