The Lemon-Blueberry Muffins of Doom

On Friday night, I had Amelia and Rachel and Emily W. over for some serious Girl Time. The details shall remain secret--deeply and darkly secret--but the next morning involved Blueberry-Lemon Muffins from Victoria Magazine. They sounded so airy, so summery, and the pictures in the magazine backed that up, being as they were full of pretty blue-and-white dishes and yellow tulips.

I'd skimmed the recipe before they arrived to make sure I had the ingredients, but I hadn't actually read it through. This turned into one of the stranger muffin-making events of my admittedly muffin-short career.

To start with, they ought to have been called "Every Bowl in the House Muffins," or possibly "Complicated and Only for Very Special Occasion Muffins." Amelia made a crumb topping while Rachel--I'm not sure what all Rachel did, though I'm sure she made coffee to keep body and soul together while we baked, but I combined flour and things in one bowl, and sugar and egg in another, but before you could put the egg-ness in you had to separate the eggs because the recipe called for one whole and then two yolks. Then, to the sugar and egg you added lemon zest, which Amelia dutifully zested and juiced. Then I had to thaw the blueberries in the microwave. The recipe wanted me to individually gently squish each berry and drain the excess juices off, but I decided whole blueberries would be just fine, thank-you-very-much.

With great relief, I finally got the muffins into the oven. Mom said, "Didn't you want to put the crumb topping on top?" Oh! Why yes, I did. So I took the muffins out of the oven, crumbed them, and put them back in.

There they baked half an hour and cooled another fifteen minutes. They were really good; but we would have starved before they were ready if not for the coffee, fruit parfaits, and baby omelettes made with the leftover egg whites. It was an amazing breakfast, actually. :-)

Today I brought the remaining Lemon-Blueberry Muffins to work. They are excellent with gooseberry jam.