Red, White and Blueberry Muffins

Happy 4th of July! 

This morning I found myself face to face with a mostly full carton of blueberries in my fridge.  Now, I like blueberries as much as the next guy, but the hubs and I aren't such blueberry fanatics that we could eat 2+ cups of them on our own before they go bad.  Dash woke us up extra early this morning, so I decided to take advantage of the morning and bake some blueberry muffins.

I got this recipe from my mom and modified it a little; this recipe also works for chocolate chip muffins or pretty much whatever else you feel like tossing in there.  You can increase the amount of whole wheat flour or eliminate it all together depending on what you're in the mood for - the proportion doesn't really matter as long as you end up with 2 cups of some kind of flour total.  This makes about a dozen muffins, but I doubled it so I could use all of my blueberries.

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbs baking powder

1 egg
1/3 cup oil (I used olive oil - melted butter would also work instead of oil)
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup plain yogurt (or sour cream)
1 tsp vanilla

1 cup blueberries

Preheat oven to 400F.  Blend the wet ingredients together.  Blend the dry ingredients together and then combine with the wet ingredients.  After rinsing the blueberries, sprinkle about a teaspoon of flour on them to coat - this will help the blueberries stay suspended in the batter so they won't all just sink to the bottom.  Mix the blueberries into the batter.

Grease a muffin pan and add the batter (I put about 1/3 cup into each muffin).

Bake for 15-20 minutes.

Allow muffins to cool for a few minutes and then turn out onto cooling rack.

Try not to burn your mouth with the molten blueberries as you shove the muffins into your mouth!

Biscuits with Blueberry Compote

Yesterday morning I wanted something a little different for breakfast, so I decided to make biscuits.  I also remembered I had some blueberries in the freezer and wanted to make something with them to put on the biscuits to make things a little more special.

For the biscuits I went to my Fannie Farmer Cookbook.  These were so easy and quick to make it's almost silly, and they were oh so good.

Baking Powder Drop Biscuits

2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup cold butter (original recipe calls for vegetable shortening, but I prefer butter)
1 cup milk

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.  Mix all of the dry ingredients together in a bowl. 

Then cut the butter in using a pastry cutter or two knives.  For this step it helps if you chop the butter into small chunks before adding it to the dry ingredients. 

 You don't want to create a paste, just kind of a coarse texture where the butter is broken into small pieces. 

Then add the milk all at once and stir until just combined. 

You can see that the dough isn't perfectly smooth and there are visible chunks of butter.  That's what makes the biscuits so tender!  Drop by large spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet.  I used my trusty Silpats to make sure they wouldn't stick to the cookie sheet at all.

Bake for about 10 minutes.  Done!  Makes around a dozen biscuits.

While the biscuits were baking I got started on a blueberry compote that I whipped up on the fly and turned out great.

Blueberry Compote

2 cups frozen blueberries, divided
1/3 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons orange juice
generous dash nutmeg
generous dash cinnamon

Put 1 cup of the blueberries (no need to thaw), the water, sugar, juice  and spices into a small pot over medium heat. 

Be sure to keep an eye on this and stir periodically as it boils to keep anything from burning.  After around 5 minutes I smashed the berries a bit with the spoon I was stirring with to thicken it a little. 

Continue heating and stirring for another 5 minutes and then add the rest of the blueberries.  Keep heating and stirring that for another 5 to 10 minutes.  That's it!

Now put a biscuit on a plate, cut it in half and ladle in some of that blueberry goodness.

Mmmm, delectable.