Every time I bake a batch of muffins, I always say that it will be my final batch. It's not because they are just too delicious that I can't stop eating one after another, but instead it is the other way around. I would like to believe that I'm just not a muffin person, but I think it has more to do with my folding technique. The weird part is that my quick breads turn out fine and they use essentially the same 'dump the wet into dry and fold until combined' method. My problem is everytime I make actual muffins vs quick breads I get so overly cautious with overmixing that I end up undermixing. With almost every batch I bake, there is always one unlucky person who ends up biting into a flour pocket and trust me.. that is embarassing!
After seeing Kevin from Closet Cooking post on raspberry lime muffins, I just had to make them even though I only had frozen berries. Using the base of CI's best blueberry muffin recipe, I swapped the raspberries for the blueberries and added lime zest only. I didn't use lime juice in case the added acidity might throw the balance off and I end up with an overly large crumb. For the first time ever, I used oil instead of butter in my muffins to see if it would make a difference on the texture. I enjoyed the extra moisture the oil provided and suprisingly I didn't really miss the butter flavour. The best part was that they weren't as crumbly or dry the next day, but it's nothing 15 seconds in the microwave can't fix.
Lately, my non stick pans havn't been as good and I actually had to grease my muffin tin. A good tip I learned from Nigella is to save the butter wrappers in the fridge and use them to grease the pan before throwing them out. I find this cleaner, faster, easier and it saves you butter! The only thing is it tends to leave a thinner film of butter than using your fingers so you need to make sure it is greased well enough.
Best Blueberry Muffin Recipe
I substituted:
* oil for the butter
* raspberries for the blueberries
* added the zest of one lime (this was not enough and will add more next time)
