Better Homes and Garden's Blueberry Muffins!

Hi to the few of you reading this, (namely my girl Amy),  another long absence, I know. I'm really crap at this bloggin' thing.

You know what they say though, "If it's not Scottish,  it's CRAP!", well not "they", but SNL and Mike Myers, and that's good enough for me.
Scottish Shop | Saturday Night Live - Yahoo Screen

Pretty much me in the kitchen.

Anywoo, I'd say I'll do better, but I'm nearing a "big" birthday and if there's one thing I've learned in my old age, it's don't make promises you can't keep. Speaking of old age, I'm at that point in my life 'where going out is coming home' (thanks Hall & Oates), I am only willing to deal with comfy shoes from Payless or Aerosoles (they have hip styles now, ok?!), and most free time I get goes to trying out new recipes and baking for family/friends/coworkers.




Alright maybe the latter is more to do with my love of food rather than old age (maybe a little of both!?), but it's a nice segue into the main topic of this post-blueberry muffins!!

Blueberry Bombers.

I had a major muffin fail awhile back, 'blueberry bombers' I called them, they were tasteless, off-color losers. A couple of bleeders made the muffins a very unappealing blue hue, which I think had largely to due with the fact that I used frozen blueberries, and mixed a little too much, (rather than "fold"). Also the recipe did not call for any cinnamon or vanilla to be added in, a "must",  I have since learned.

So fast forward to my do-over, using the same recipe, from , of course, Grandma's trusty Better Homes and Gardens cook book, circa 1946, with a few modifications from me. (You can see another post with more recipes from that book here).

Comparing these recipes to modern day ones, you notice so many differences, for one, the "serves (number of people)" amount is always so much higher, indicating what we know about present day portion sizes to be true (oink). The recipes also seem to call for far less sugar, vanilla, etc than those I am familiar with seeing on cooking websites and Pinterest. It's like we've became a nation of over eaters with dulled tastebuds! Pretty sad, really. I am attempting to eat as many freshly prepared meals as possible lately, and honestly I think the lack of preservatives/chemicals in food pre 1970s is what kept most people at a healthy weight despite eating rich foods (I feel like I've gone on about this before, so forgive me if it's a repeat).

In short, thus renews my motivation to try and cook for myself more.

Obviously a more realistic photo of me baking

Okay maybe not, but I did wear this darling 50s apron my Mam gave me, how sweet is the little detail on the pocket!? Swoon.

So, on to the recipe. 

Here it is in full page form: 

and a close up of the recipe I'll be using: 

Now I made a few modifications (in red), so here is the recipe as I made it:

Dry ingredients:

          

• 2 cups four    
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 cup of sugar (upped from 2 tablespoons or 1/8 cup)
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon (not in recipe)

I mixed those together and used the "Stir" setting on my KitchenAid for about a minute, then whisked my wet ingredients together in a separate bowl.

Wet Ingredients:

Gross looking, I know.

• 3/4 cup of milk (reduced from 1 cup as per the blueberry muffin instructions)
• 1 beaten egg
• 3 tablespoons melted shortening 
• 2 teaspoons real vanilla extract (not in recipe)

After mixing all of that together (speed setting 2 for about two minutes),  I "folded" in:

Pretty picture of blueberries that I stole from Google.

• 1 1/2 cups fresh blueberries (upped from 3/4 cup) 

Here's what they look like just before I stuck them in the oven (I used baking cups rather than greasing the muffin pan), and boy when they say 1 dozen, they sure mean it. I didn't have a bit to spare: 

Please ignore my clean-but-trashed-muffin pan that badly needs replacing.

So as you can see, no blue hue, yay! I baked those puppies at 400º for about 18 minutes, then whisked together great basic glaze to drizzle over them:

• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 3 teaspoons milk (I used 2%)
• 1 teaspoon real vanilla extract

Here's what they looked like all baked with the glaze on top:

A little lumpy but they sure were yummy! I think next time I may up the sugar to 1 cup, my modern taste buds need it. Maybe in time I'll get used to having less, but if you're like me you may want a bit more! Also this recipe seemed to use shortening instead of butter (which I noticed a lot of vintage recipes do), so I think a bit more sugar would compensate taste-wise. 

Hope you liked the post, till next time darlings! ❤