light corn & blueberry muffins

I have a lot of blueberries to use up (I love these predicaments!) so decided to make blueberry muffins for breakfast. There’s something great about having fresh, hot muffins in the morning. I baked these on a weekday, so in order to make it less stressful with all the morning chaos around here (getting two young boys out the door in the morning can be a hair pulling experience – lots of “Aren’t you dressed YET?!?!”… and “Why are you building a fort in the living room now?!?!”) I prepared the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients the night before. So all I had to do when I woke up was to whip the butter and sugar together and assemble the rest while the oven was heating up. 10 minutes tops. Then the muffins can bake while I jump in the shower. Not too hard at all, really.

You can forget the final step in the recipe which suggests letting them cool an additional 10 minutes before eating them. Whatever! Really – that’s just not realistic. Just be mindful that those blueberries can be hot as your scarfing them down.

Light Corn & Blueberry Muffins

(adapted from America’s Test Kitchen’s “Family Baking Book”)

2 cups all purpose flour (plus 1 tablespoon)

1 cup yellow cornmeal

1 cup sugar (plus some more to sprinkle on muffins)

1 tablespoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

¾ cup plain low-fat yogurt

½ cup whole milk (2% also works, but the authors discourage using skim)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 tablespoons butter, softened

2 large eggs

2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray a 12-cup muffin tin with vegetable oil spray.

Whisk the flour, cornmeal, ¼ cup of the sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a medium bowl; set aside. In a small bowl, stir the yogurt, milk and vanilla together.

In a large bowl, beat the remaining ¾ cup sugar and butter together with an electric mixer on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, 3 to 6 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula as needed. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Reduce the mixer speed to low. Beat in one-third of the flour mixture until just incorporated, followed by half of the yogurt mixture, scraping down the bowl as needed. Repeat with half of the remaining flour mixture and the remaining yogurt. Try not overmix. Beat in the remaining flour mixture until just incorporated. Gently fold blueberries, tossed with 1 tablespoon flour, into the finished batter.

Using a 1/3 cup measure sprayed with vegetable oil spray, portion the batter into each muffin cup, then portion any remaining batter evenly among the cups using a small spoon. Sprinkle each muffin with ½ teaspoon sugar. Bake until golden and toothpick comes out with just a few crumbs attached, 18 to 20 minutes, rotating the pan half-way through baking.

Let the muffins cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then flip out onto a wire rack and let cool for 10 minutes before serving.

Oh – and here’s the nutritional info for each muffin:

Cal 300; Fat 5g; Sat fat 3.5g; Chol 50 mg; Carb 58 g; Protein 6g; Fiber 2g; Sodium 270 mg