Slow Mornings
We love to get up at to watch the sunrise and there’s a real gift of nature this time of year: the sun still rises after 6AM and it’s too cold to start any outdoor projects before 9 at the earliest…so it’s easy to linger over coffee. If it’s a perfect morning, there’s baking involved.
Last week we made a fun little reel on IG about the stash of eggs Steve found in the sheep’s hay bin, which lead me to post about my favorite blueberry muffin recipe. With the disclaimer that I only know enough about social media to be dangerous, I wrote in the description to DM us if you wanted the recipe…I was overwhelmed with requests (tiny note: we were still recovering from that 37 hour Vietnam to Searsport trip) and I lost track of where everyone’s contact information is…BUT…posting the recipe on this blog is easy so here it is!
Blueberry Muffins from Elsie Masterton’s Blueberry Hill Cookbook, 1959
Ingredients
| 3 ½ cups flour | ½ cup melted butter |
| 1 ½ teaspoons salt | 1 ½ cups milk |
| 2/3 cup sugar | 2 cups blueberries (fresh or frozen without syrup |
| 4 teaspoons baking powder | |
| 4 Eggs |
Directions
Sift together dry ingredients. In another bowl, beat the eggs and stir in melted butter and milk. Stir egg mixture into flour mixture, quickly. This is the secret to good muffins: Don’t overdo the mixing; the minute the ingredients are combined, stop.
Toss blueberries in a little flour, to keep them from sinking to the bottoms of the muffins, then fold them into the batter.
Bake in greased muffin tins (the smaller the better, if you don’t mind the work) in a hot (450° F) oven about 15 minutes, or until skewer inserted in a muffin comes out dry. If you use tiny tea-muffin tins, they will be done in about 8 minutes.
These muffins freeze perfectly, so if you have a freezer, make a lot and keep them in it. I keep them in a plastic bag. Defrost them by placing them frozen back into the tins they were baked in, and heating them slowly until they’re piping hot
3 dozen large muffins, 6 to 8 dozen tiny muffins
My mother used to love collecting New England cookbooks filled with stories and little illustrations and Elsie Masterton was both a wonderful cook and delightful story teller. If you want to read my copy when you’re camping here this summer just ask, or even better, scour some of our used book stores and antique stalls and find your own copy. How can you go wrong when Elsie tells you “Every breakfast needn’t be eggs; shouldn’t be, really. You can stir up the batter for the most divine sour cream waffles in hardly more time than it takes to scramble an egg. “ ?
Remember, here in Maine we celebrate the divine trinity: blueberries, lobsters and lighthouses!