How to make terrible blueberry muffins

The first step to making a terrible muffin is to try an entirely unfamiliar recipe. The second is to not follow the recipe. Follow me for more tips on making “No-Rise Blueberry Muffins!”

In attempt to inspire my middle school-aged daughter to excel in her opening season track meet the following morning, we watched the movie, “Miracle.” The movie isn’t as good as the documentary, “Miracle on Ice.” The best part of the movie is that the Boston and Upper Midwest accents are actually good. After watching Julianne Moore’s cringy Boston accent in “30 Rock,” of was refreshing to hear something that sounds passable. I learned later that this was because most of the people in the movies were actual hockey players who were taught to act rather than the other way around. Drama in real life, if you will. Perhaps I had hockey on the brain when I made these delectable little treats. These “muffins” could not be bound by ordinary properties of physics, the parts could not have possible created a sum this dense.

Have you ever baked something and thought, “I should probably do this professionally, it would a shame to deprive the world of such skill and technique.” I have not.

Here is the recipe, for Lemon Blueberry Breakfast Muffins. It promises to be so delicious that, “even picky toddlers” will love these muffins. No mention about mouthy teenagers or husband’s with above average baking skills.

As previously posted, I have a track records of less than ideal baking outcomes. Who can forget the ultra low carb but super salty Almond Flour Coffee Cake? Feeling peckish, how about a go at my “Banana Bread Rinds?” My one consistent recipe is my Apple Chocolate Chip Cake.

The past few times I made anything with frozen blueberries, I had a few bites that were, “off.” Sour, tangy in an unpleasant way, I figured it was the berries but realized after opening a new bag that it was the baking soda/powder reacting with the berry acid (scientific name.) Refusing to break my hard-line rule about only using ONE bowl when baking, I diligently mixed up and sifted (by fluffing the flour in the air as I measured) my dry ingredients before adding my wet. I gently folded in my berries with all of their acids and then waited. Around the half-way point, I turned the muffin pan 180 degrees, I noted that they seemed a little flat but as this was a yogurt based muffin, I thought they just had to overcome a little more whole milk weight before rising. I was wrong. The timer dinged and when I opened the oven, they were still little muffin pucks. The good news is they did not have that unpleasant “zingy sour” taste of muffins past. The bad news is I had entirely omitted and baking powder and or soda from the mixture.

Rare photo of the pucks as they emerge from their holes.

Thankfully, I skipped the struesel topping. Who knows what horrors I would have inflicted upon the world. At least they could have supported the extra weight, birthing hips on these muffins.

My kids laughed at me. I ate them anyway. Food photography is not my thing and neither is baking. When life hands you blueberries, make hockey pucks but wait until the morning after the race. My daughter ran her little heart out, owing largely to the fact that she had not yet consumed any of the lead-based muffins. Perhaps if she had known what awaited her, she would have run even faster in the opposite direction.

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