Welcome -- and a blueberry muffin recipe!

My first substack post

Hello all! It’s Madeline — from SweetThingSupperClub on Instagram or NormalMadeline on Twitter. Over the past two years — and I’m about to get really corny here - baking has been my refuge. 2024 has been the most difficult year of my life, and I have truly turned to baking to weather me through all of it. My favorite part of baking is giving it away. Sharing my food with others is more rewarding to me than even eating it is (and eating it is pretty great). Sharing it digitally is the next best thing. We’ll get in to a more proper introduction later, but first I want to share the recipe I created for the BEST BLUEBERRY MUFFINS YOU WILL EVER EAT IN YOUR LIFE. I slightly adapted this recipe from Alex Ernst, but made some vital changes along the way. These muffins are tenderized with buttermilk and sour cream, brightened with lemon zest, and topped with homemade blueberry jam and a classic streusel. They are pillowy soft, tangy, and perfectly sweet.

I won’t bore you with any extra details. Here’s the recipe*:

INGREDIENTS:

- 2 & 1/2 cups (315g) all-purpose flour

- 1 tbsp baking powder

- 1 tsp baking soda

- 1/2 tsp kosher salt

- 1/2 cup (114g) unsalted butter, melted and cooled

- 1 cup (200g) granulated sugar

- 1 tbsp lemon zest

- 2 large eggs, room temp

- 1/2 cup (125ml) buttermilk

- 1/2 cup (120g) sour cream

- 2 tsp vanilla extract

- 1/2 tsp cinnamon

- 1 & 1/2 cups (230g) blueberries

Jam topping:

- 1 cup (190g) blueberries

- 1 tbsp lemon juice

- 1 tbsp granulated sugar

Streusel topping:

- 1/2 cup (60g) all-purpose flour

- 1/3 cup + 1 tablespoon (67g) granulated sugar

- 2 tablespoons (40g) brown sugar

- 4 tablespoons (60g) melted unsalted butter

Before making the muffins, prepare your jam. Simply combine blueberries, sugar, and lemon juice in a heavy bottom sauce pan over medium until the blueberries have mostly burst (you can use a fork to mash them up against the sides of the pot) and the jam has thickened to a simmer.

Then, assemble the streusel topping by whisking the flour, sugar, and butter with a fork in a small bowl, until clumps form. Don’t overmix in to a paste — you want large clumps here. Preheat the oven to 425 and set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk your dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt) together.

In a separate bowl, rub your sugar and lemon zest in between your fingers. This helps release the oil from the lemons to bring out more lemon flavor. Pour in the melted butter and whisk before adding the buttermilk, sour cream, eggs, and vanilla and whisking again to combine.

Finally, whisk in your dry ingredients until just combined and no dry spots remain. Don’t overmix here — doing so will result in a muffin that is too dense and chewy.

Toss your blueberries in 1-2 tsp of all-purpose flour to prevent them from sinking. Fold them gently in to the batter with a rubber spatula until evenly distributed in to the batter.

Divide your batter in to a 12 muffin cup pan (I like paper tulip cups for their bakery-style feel), filling each to the top.

Add one teaspoon of the jam to the top of each muffin. Then top the surface of each muffin with a spoonful of streusel topping. Bake for five minutes at 425F, then reduce the heat to 375F without opening the oven for 15 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Allow the muffins to cool in the pans for for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. 

Once again, I hope we can get to know each other better in a future post. I just had to share these muffins as soon as I could so no one could miss out on how good they are.

*You’ll notice I include the recipe in cups, as well as grams. I’ll talk about this more in a future post, but I strongly recommend getting a scale and measuring your ingredients in grams. You will be able to replicate the recipe far more accurately this way, and won’t risk drying out your muffins with too much flour by measuring volumetrically.