Buttermilk Blueberry Cream Cheese Muffins

I found a recipe for Blueberry & Cream Cheese Muffins in the June 2012 issue of Glamour magazine, which I intended to try. However, I inadvertently made this recipe my own by improvising on ingredients and compensating for mistakes when reading the directions. Luckily they turned out great!

ingredients.

14 T. butter
6 T. vegetable oil
2 c. sour cream
6 large eggs
3 c. buttermilk
7 c. all-purpose flour
2 T. baking powder
2 c. superfine sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
4 c. blueberries
8 oz cream cheese
Turbinado sugar, for garnish

directions

Line a muffin pan with wrappers; preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Melt butter in a medium nonstick pot over low heat. Remove from heat and let cool a bit. Whisk in oil, sour cream, vanilla, eggs and buttermilk.
Sift flour and baking powder into a large bowl. Stir in the sugar and salt, then make a well in the middle.
Pour the wet mixture into the flour well. Lightly fold in the dry ingredients into the wet using a wooden spoon or rubber spatula until the mixture just comes together.
Drop a few berries into the bottom of each muffin cup, then spoon batter on top, fill about half-way. Drop a few more berries and 1 teaspoon of cream cheese then add remaining batter to fill the cup. Drop additional berries on top and add another teaspoon of cream cheese to the top.
Bake muffins for 18 to 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with Turbinado sugar. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then transfer to a rack and let completely cool.

This recipe should make about 48 muffins, though I intended to only make 24. The mistakes I made when reading the recipe caused me to somehow double the ingredients. That or the original recipe portions are wrong.

The original recipe called for yogurt, which I didn’t have. As I did have sour cream, I used that instead. Also I accidentally added half a cup too much flour. The dough would not come together at all for me so I kept adding buttermilk until I felt as though the dough was the right consistency. I imagined it would only take 1/2 to 1 cup of buttermilk. Instead it took three cups!

I opted not to fold the blueberries into the batter and instead strategically place them in the muffin cups, which takes longer but I believe is worth it. Blueberries tend to get crushed easily or lump together when used in baking breads and muffins – in my experience. I once made Fresh Blueberry Pound Cake with Lemon Glaze that was to die for – buuuuuuuuut all the blueberries congregated at the bottom of the bread (because I mixed them into the batter).

Recipe rating: 