bonjour baking.

the simplest things are sometimes the best things.

this is actually weeks old, but my life has been all consumed with work and other various things i’d rather not say on the void that is the internet.

this is my grandmother’s recipe for blueberry muffins. i made two different kinds. blueberry and an altered raspberry muffin.

combine the dry ingredients (2 cups of flour, 2 teaspoons of baking powder, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 3/4 cup of sugar). and then you need to melt vegetable shortening, 1/2 a cup to be exact. this probably needs to go in a large separate bowl. add an egg to the shortening and whisk until combined. add the 1 cup of milk to the egg-shortening mixture and mix. slowly add the dry ingredients. it should be full of lumps.

i always use frozen blueberries. they are smaller i guess. so a little less obtrusive. about 1 cup.

i also don’t use cupcake liners for muffins. it doesn’t feel right. set your oven to 400 and then bake for about 15 minutes.

this is quite a lovely way to let them cool.

done. with blueberries.

for the raspberry muffins. dust an overflowing cup of raspberries with flour, it will prevent them from sinking to the bottom. i used the same ratios and methods as above, but instead of shortening i used butter, as an experiment. so just replace the 1/2 cup of shortening with 1/2 cup of melted unsalted butter. it really did make a difference in textures. the shortening in the blueberries made a more dense muffin, whereas the butter made a lighter cake-ier raspberry muffin. strange. like science. 

and finished. don’t you just absolutely adore the cotton?