Cupcakes or teacakes with smashed blueberries which New York Times Cooking called muffins – but they aren’t. No way.
My favourite berry
I crave blueberries every spring, as I make a point of not buying the ones flown across half the world or extortionately expensive ones produced by ‘kill the planet’ greenhouse methods.
Blueberries are not as sensitive to sunshine and locality as strawberries are, so we get them from all over Europe when the time comes – but not any sooner.
Everything tastes much nicer when you’ve not had it for a while: absence makes the taste buds fonder.
What to call these bakes?
And here is another variation on the blueberry baking theme as I can never get enough. But are these cupcakes? I’m not so sure. Where’s the buttercream?
The recipe, which I tweaked slightly, comes from NY Times Cooking where it was labelled ‘muffins’. But you can’t really call them that either.
Muffins are rough and ready, wet-into-dry, don’t overmix type of bakes. Cupcakes have dainty buttercream frosting. So what about these things? Muffcakes? Cupkins? I don’t really like those neo-foods as much as I adore Humpty Dumpty.
If it was one large confection, it would most certainly be called cake. Cakelets?
Whatever you call these, and I decided in the end to rechristen them ‘cupcakes’, they are jolly nice.
Smash the blueberries
This undoubtedly is the USP of the recipe: the blueberries are smashed, but only some. The rest remain whole, which all together gives the cupcakes/muffins a nice tinge of colour and varied texture.
Can you use frozen berries?
In theory, most small bakes are better made with frozen berries since they will keep their shapes and stay put when folded into batter.
However, in this recipe you actually want at least some of the blueberries smushed and leaching juice and colour all over the mix!
In which case, if you want to use frozen blueberries out of the season, thaw some of them and fold in together with the frozen solid ones. The thawed ones will provide the mushy factor and the frozen ones will stay as they were.
Encased or naked muffins?
I am not terribly keen on muffin cases since they tend to hold onto the muffin so tight, half the treat is left on the paper case. And then you have to go look for a spoon or knife to scrape the crumbs off the paper, and it’s just hassle, especially if you’re having the muffin on a park bench, let’s say.
On the other hand the case is to avert grubby paws post-treat, and to facilitate removal of the bakes from the tin.
If like mine your preference is towards naked muffins, you’ll have to spend some time rubbing butter into each hole of the muffin tin, especially around the bottom. For a good measure you can also sprinkle them with flour, shaking out excess.
In this instance, bake with or without paper cases but if the latter, butter the tin thoroughly.
Not your usual muffin mix
And that’s another reason why I call these ‘cupcakes’ rather than muffins: the batter is cakey. The method is a cake method. You need a mixer.
Muffin mix, as everybody knows is wet-into-dry (or vice versa, tip: it doesn’t matter). Flour with sugar and baking powder in one bowl, the liquids which are any dairy with eggs and oil, bish and bash, don’t overwork the batter.
This, conversely, is a standard cake procedure that starts with creaming the butter (butter! not oil, and not even melted) with sugar, then adding eggs (more than one egg: which means it ain’t a muffin, Mama), to achieve fluffy and light mixture. Muffins are not fluffy.
The final stage is adding the flour alternating with buttermilk which again, is straight out of a cake book.
Once the blueberries, both smashed and intact are folded in, you can fill the cases or holes in the tin and pretend all this effort was just to make a bunch of ordinary muffins. But they are delightfully so, so much more than that.
More cupcake recipes
Vanilla and chocolate cupcakes with meringue buttercream frosting. These fluffy cupcakes are frosted with Swiss meringue buttercream, piped on cupcakes filled with chocolate ganache.
Lemon and almond teacakes from Ottolenghi are really mini ring cakes or individual doughnut cakes but so delicious you can call them anything you like, it won’t matter.
Carrot cupcakes with orange buttercream frosting, decorated for Halloween. The carrot cake mix is the best and it works brilliantly in these carrot cupcakes adopted for Halloween.
More muffin recipes
Banana muffins made with the best banana cake mix. Banana muffins are a great breakfast or brunch, and this easy recipe can be used for muffins or for a loaf cake.
Double chocolate muffins recipe, with dark chocolate in the mix and chocolate chips stirred in. Or even triple chocolate, if you use two kinds of chips. These chocolate muffins are easy to make and fool proof, the chocolate in the muffin mix makes it more forgiving.
Buttery cornmeal muffins with glace cherries, gluten free and enormously satisfying. Crunchy around the edges, the jewelled glace cherries intersperse rich yellow cornmeal crumb.