weekly cookbook project: blueberry muffins

Surprisingly, I've never baked a blueberry muffin in my whole life. Not sure why, since it's probably the most common muffin out there.  I'm thinking it's the high price of blueberries, or maybe always opting to make something with chocolate. That changed this week, though, when I made my first blueberry muffin ever.

I dipped into my King Arthur Flour cookbook again and made their Classic Blueberry Muffin recipe. (I tried to find it online so I could post it, but couldn't.) They have an all-purpose basic muffin recipe that calls for sour cream and a classic recipe that doesn't. Since I didn't have sour cream--no surprise there--I went with the classic recipe.

It was really very easy. Just a matter of rinsing the blueberries and then mashing some of them, then mixing all the ingredients together. These are made like a cake batter, where you cream the butter and sugar first, then add eggs, then alternate flour and milk. I topped each with a little table sugar. The other option was cinnamon sugar, but I didn't feel like making it. I opted for cupcake liners for the pan so I wouldn't have as much cleanup. I was thwarted, though, by all the runny blueberry juice. Oh well. I tried. Actually, the mess isn't that bad--I'm just being lazy. I'm thinking next time I'll spray the whole pan with Bake Easy spray and then put the cupcake liners in. Double protection.

I have to say, it was insanely hard to not grab a hot muffin right from the pan. They were quite delicate because they were so hot and I didn't want to damage them, so I put them on the cooling rack without grabbing even a crumb. I was strong--I made it a whole five minutes before I gave in and grabbed one, which I promptly slathered in butter. They were absolutely delicious and so soft! And they were jam-packed with blueberries.

The sugar content in these was about 16g of sugar according to the recipe. I don't know if that's supposed to include the optional sugar topping, but I thinking not. One whole muffin was a bit much in the sugar department, as I felt a bit queasy for about 20 minutes afterwards (fellow WLS post-ops know what I mean...) But oh man, it was SO worth it! I took another one later on; however, I cut it in half and took about a 10 minute break in between halves. That helped me to not feel queasy.

Just a note:  I realize that I can alter recipes to include more protein, less sugar and carbs, etc., and as a gastric bypass post-op I probably should.  But I'm not super creative when it comes to that. (Kudos to those that are--there are some great websites out there!) I also don't like buying a bunch of alternative ingredients that I may use only once.  Plus, I want to feel that I'm like everyone else. That I can eat regular foods, just in smaller portions. I don't want to alter something that's going to trick my mind into thinking I can eat double because it has half the sugar. Kind of like those 100 calories snacks. They make you feel like you're being virtuous because they're only 100 calories, but then you eat two portions because, really, is one usually enough? Not for me.