Do you know Joy the Baker? She has a superb blog filled with casual musings, tempting sweets, healthy smoothies, and luscious sandwiches. Let me stop here a minute and say, seriously, Joy is a stone cold sandwich genius--Coffee Bacon Sandwiches; Grilled Ham, Cheese, Pickle, and Potato Chip Sandwich; Spinach and Artichoke Grilled Cheese--and those are just the ones I have tried!
It is completely inexcusable that it took me so long to dive into her first cookbook.
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| Um, we should all look this sexy when we bake. |
This book has beautiful photography, a picture for each recipe (always appreciated), a helpful chapter on baking tips: What's cake flour? What if I don't have ____?, Joy's signature humor, a healthy mix of decadent recipes (Smores Brownies, Baked Chili Cheese Fries, Peanut Butter Birthday Cake) and healthy ones too (Toasted Oat Smoothie; Flaxseed and Black Pepper Crackers). Joy's book challenges a novice baker to learn a few new things and offers experienced bakers many tempting new spins on traditional recipes. I couldn't narrow it down to one recipe to try so I sampled:
Cocoa Almond Granola which I should have taken out 5 minutes sooner as mine got a little too toasty. Completely delicious on coconut greek yogurt with strawberries on top.
And the one I'm going to share today: Brown Butter Blueberry Muffins. Warm from the oven with tiny flecks of browned butter and a crunchy streusel topping? More of my mornings should start like this.
I misread the ingredient list when I was at the store and bought only half the amount of fresh blueberries called for but I didn't feel that the muffins were lacking anything even with my oversight.
Brown Butter Blueberry Muffins
7 Tbsp unsalted butter
1/3 cup milk
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
2 cups blueberries (fresh or frozen; if frozen, thaw first and pat dry before adding to batter)
Topping:
3 Tbsp unsalted butter, cold
1/2 cup flour
3 Tbsp sugar
Preheat your oven to 375 and line a muffin tin with 12 paper liners.
Melt the butter in a small skillet or saucepan over medium heat. Watch the butter during this time. First it will melt, then crackle as the water evaporates out, foam, and then start to get little brown flecks as it toasts. Stir a couple of times during this process to distribute the browning. When the butter is a nice hazelnut color, pour it into a heatproof dish (don't leave it in the pan as you run the risk of further browning and possibly burning the butter) and let it cool a bit while you assemble your other ingredients.
Measure your milk into a 1-cup liquid measuring cup, then add the egg, egg yolk, and vanilla and mix lightly until combined. After the brown butter has cooled slightly, add it to the milk mixture.
In another bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients all at once and mix just until the dry ingredients have been incorporated. Gently fold in the blueberries and divide between muffin liners.
In a small bowl, mix butter, flour, and sugar together with a fork or your impeccably clean hands until no large lumps of butter remain and your mixture is coarse and crumbly. Divide evenly over the muffin tops. it will seem like you are overloading them, but trust me, you're not.
Bake for 18-20 minutes. Muffins should be golden and crisp on the top, and a cake-tester will come out clean.
Let the muffins cool 15 minutes in the pan before removing.
