Blueberry Muffins

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
• 1 cup milk
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups fresh blueberries

Method

Heat your oven to 190°C. Line a twelve-cup muffin tin with paper cases — they prevent the edges from browning too dark and make extraction clean. The control here is restraint: you're building a tender crumb through muffins|minimal mixing, not developing gluten like bread dough.

Whisk 250g flour, 200g caster sugar, 1½ teaspoons baking powder, and ¼ teaspoon salt in a large bowl. Break this up with your fingers to distribute the baking powder evenly — lumps of leavening create holes rather than an even rise. In a second bowl, whisk 125g melted butter, 240ml milk, 2 eggs, and 1 teaspoon vanilla until homogenous. The emulsion matters; the fat and liquid need to coat the flour properly when they meet.

Pour the wet ingredients directly into the dry bowl. Stir with a spatula until you see no visible flour — about a dozen strokes. Stop. Overmixing activates gluten development, tightening the crumb into a dense, tough muffin. A few lumps in the batter are fine; they dissolve in the oven's heat anyway. Fold in 200g fresh blueberries gently with two turns of the spatula. Toss them in a tablespoon of flour first if they're very wet — it keeps them from sinking or bleeding colour through the batter.

Divide the batter evenly among the cups, filling each three-quarters full. Bake at 190°C for 22–26 minutes. The top will dome and turn golden, and a skewer inserted into the centre will come out clean with maybe one moist crumb clinging to it — overcooking dries them out. If the peaks look pale at 22 minutes but a skewer comes out wet, cover loosely with foil and give them two more minutes; you want the centre set, not the top charred.

Leave the muffins in the tin for five minutes — they're still setting and will shatter if you move them now. Turn them out onto a cooling-rack to cool. The base needs air circulating underneath, or they'll steam and soften. Eat them warm or at room temperature the same day, or wrap and freeze for up to a month.