Blueberry muffins: high domes from a hot start
Homemade muffins usually come out flat, while café ones have high, cracked domes. Much of the difference lies in the starting temperature and in well-filled cases: the first five minutes at 220 °C produce a violent burst of steam that lifts the centre before a crust can form. The oven then drops to 180 °C to finish baking. The second rule is the one that governs all muffins: mix as little as possible and leave the lumps.
Your own work in that: 15 min.
- Batter 15 min
- Baking 25 min
- Cooling 10 min
Step by step
0 / 6 doneHeat the oven to 220 degrees
Heat the oven to 220 °C and line a 12-hole muffin tin with cases. The high starting temperature is the single most important element here — the oven must be ready before you begin mixing.
Two hundred and twenty degrees before you startMix wet and dry separately
In a large bowl combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, bicarbonate and salt. In a jug whisk the buttermilk with the eggs, the cooled melted butter, lemon zest and vanilla sugar. Hot butter would scramble the eggs into white threads.
Ingredients: 240 ml buttermilk · 2 pcs eggs · 110 g butter · 1 pcs lemon zest · 1 tbsp vanilla sugar
Butter cooled before it meets the eggsToss the blueberries in flour
Toss the blueberries with a tablespoon of flour until lightly dusted. The flour dries the skins and helps the berries cling to the thick batter, so they stay suspended instead of sinking to the bottom of the cases.
Ingredients: 250 g blueberries · 1 tbsp flour to coat · 2 tbsp coarse sugar
Tip<b>Don't thaw</b> frozen blueberries. Add them straight from the freezer, floured — thawed they bleed and stain the whole batter blue-grey.
A spoon of flour keeps the fruit suspendedCombine in ten strokes
Pour the wet into the dry and fold with a spatula no more than 10 strokes. The batter should be lumpy, with streaks of dry flour still visible. Add the blueberries and give it 3 more strokes. It looks unfinished, and that is right.
Ingredients: 320 g plain flour · 180 g sugar · 2 tsp baking powder · ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda · ½ tsp salt
TipEvery extra stroke develops gluten. Muffins from a smooth batter are dense, rubbery and full of long tunnels — the commonest and easiest mistake in this recipe.
Ten strokes, lumps stayFill the cases to the brim
Fill the cases right to the top, not three quarters. That is not a mistake: a full case is the condition for a high dome. Sprinkle each muffin with coarse sugar for a crisp crust.
To the brim, then coarse sugarBake hot, then cooler
Bake 5 minutes at 220 °C, then without opening the oven drop to 180 °C and bake another 16–18 minutes. A skewer should come out with moist crumbs. Cool in the tin 5 minutes, then on a rack.
Before you start
Why buttermilk
The acid in buttermilk reacts with the bicarbonate for an extra burst of carbon dioxide, and at the same time softens the gluten. Without it: 240 ml of milk plus a tablespoon of lemon juice, left 10 minutes.
Other fruit
Raspberries (more fragile, fold even more carefully), chopped strawberries, pitted sour cherries, wild bilberries (they stain the batter more). The rule holds: 250 g of fruit per 320 g of flour, always floured first.
How long they stay fresh
Two days in a sealed container, but they are best on the day. They freeze beautifully — reheat from frozen, 12 minutes at 160 °C, and they taste almost newly baked.
With a crumble top
Instead of coarse sugar: rub 40 g flour, 30 g butter and 30 g sugar into crumbs and scatter over before baking. A crumble top gives a crisp, buttery crust.
