When No Other Muffin Will Do
you make your own muffins
Hello and welcome to A Newsletter! If you’ve found your way over by some miracle but are not yet subscribed, here, let me help you with that:
Before I even gave birth, I started to get questions about what kind of food I would make my child, how I would change my cooking style once I had a baby, when I might start to release postpartum recipes, or when I would start to consider a cookbook for toddlers (probably never).
As a person who’s not great at seeing more than two weeks in front of them, I of course did not (and do not) have a suitable answer for any of those questions. In my mind, not much would change. It remind me a lot of the discourse around fashion for expectant/new moms: “who am I now,” “what do I wear now,” “can I still wear this,” etc.
The assumption that our identities would change as drastically as our bodies was not something I connected to, which is to say, I’m still as confused about what I should wear as I was before. Like are high-waisted pants so uncool that I might simply evaporate into the air as soon as I step foot in Dimes Square? Sorry, they are the only pants that look good on my body!
I feel similar in regards to my cooking and eating. As a new parent, would I all of a sudden become a person who did “meal prep?” or pivot exclusively to sheet pan dinners or high-protein snack bites that work great in the freezer? So far…no. So far, I’m cooking the same as I was pre-baby, more often than not ignoring the nutritional cries for help in favor of something extremely delicious because feeding my soul is more important, and plus, that’s what the vitamins are for. I still don’t plan ahead, my grocery store trips are as frequent and chaotic as before, and I’m just as disorganized as ever, still trying to defrost a chicken two hours before dinner time, which is now sandwiched somewhere in the 33 minutes between second-to-last-bottle of the night and bath time. These things aren’t doing me any favors, but I am who I am.
But now, three months postpartum, I guess I am also…muffins? Muffins are me. Becomes a mother, makes muffins.
About one month after I had Charlie, I started to hobble back into the kitchen, making things that didn’t require much brain power or creativity. Which is to say: beans. So many beans. But also…these muffins. After nearly 40 years on this planet as a person I’d describe as “muffin agnostic,” (mostly fine, but often too large, too dry, too sweet, too cake-y, too complicated), I became a woman obsessed with baking and eating a GREAT blueberry muffin. So I began. I had to have them. I wasn’t sleeping, I wasn’t putting on outside clothes, I couldn’t text you back, but I was making muffins.
After the third batch that I described to my husband as “trash muffins,” he asked me (visibly sad that I had thrown them into the trash), “What are you even looking for? Like what even is a ‘great muffin?’”. It could have been the lack of sleep, but this question felt loaded, perhaps a Trojan horse for a broader discussion about my quest for unattainable perfection, but I told him I’d know it when I had it, and so would he.
Maybe even sadder now that the house is no longer always full of muffins, but he now knows what a great muffin is: Not all that sweet but still sweet enough to be described as “a nice little treat.” Pleasantly eggy in the way a good pancake is, moist but not cake-y, domed with a nice little mushroom top but without sacrificing the quality of the interior (nobody will be eating just the top off these muffins, they are good the whole way through). No crumble topping because I find that to be distracting and annoying to make and if I wanted coffee cake, that’s what I would make (side note: I should make a coffee cake soon). More blueberries than you think possible to fit inside, but they do. Doesn’t require any sort of electric mixer or complicated technique. Is great with some nice salted butter but doesn’t depend on it. And perhaps most importantly, a great muffin is excellent (maybe even better) the next day.
Thank you to Minted for sponsoring these muffins—and for recognizing that they're gift-worthy. Pair them with a handwritten note and a sweet photo (printed and framed!) and you've got something any mom or important person in your life would love. Use code ALISONROMAN for 20% off Minted stationery and 10% off art.
Blueberry Muffins
Makes 12 standard-sized muffins
2 cups (300g) AP flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
¾ cup buttermilk or thin yogurt
¾ cup (180g) sugar plus more
¼ cup lightly packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
½ cup (1 stick) melted unsalted butter or olive oil
1 tablespoon finely grated lemon zest, ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon OR ½ teaspoon vanilla extract, all optional
2 ½ cups fresh or frozen blueberries (if using frozen, do not defrost)
1. Preheat oven to 425°F. Line 12 standard muffin tins with liners, parchment or simply spray with nonstick spray; set aside.
2. Whisk flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda in a small bowl; set aside.
3. Whisk light brown sugar, eggs and ¾ cup sugar in a large bowl. Whisk in buttermilk and butter. Using a spatula, stir the flour mixture into the buttermilk mixture until well combined– a few bits of visible flour are okay (be gentle and don’t overmix).
4. Fold in about two cups of blueberries until well distributed. Divide among prepared muffin tins and top with remaining blueberries. Sprinkle each muffin with a good amount of sugar and bake until nicely golden brown, significantly puffed up and baked through, 17–20 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack or just on the counter at room temperature.
DO AHEAD: Muffins can be made a few days ahead, stored wrapped and at room temperature (I like them best the next day, honestly).
As a Blueberry Mufin kind of guy and having the privilege of taste testing at least one batch, I will give these my papa stamp of approval. All systems are go.
solid starts collab