With my dad's eye swollen by a nasty insect bite, I decided to do a bit of baking to cheer him up. Luckily, he had recently spotted a sale on blueberries during his last trip to the market, so I made his favorite breakfast item--blueberry muffins!

I came across several different muffin recipes, all calling for very different amounts of flour, fats, and sugar. It was a tough call, but I settled with this recipe because it had 2,141 votes of confidence. How can you really compete against that kind of support?

I skipped the crumb topping since everyone in my family is watching their sugar intake. Plus, I wanted to keep things simple. This recipe could not have been easier to recreate. I didn't even have to pull out a mixer to help do the work. These muffins were completely made by hand, and it was a strangely satisfying experience.

The muffins came out of the oven much paler than I anticipated, but they at least had nice, rounded tops. My dad thought that they were too sweet, but my mom and I enjoyed the taste of it. However, I had used skim milk instead of whole milk in the recipe so the muffins were dry. I really need to invest in whole milk, or as Cook's Illustrated claims, I could supplement the skim milk with some heavy cream to get the same effect.

I would love to try this recipe again because it was so quick and easy to put together. Next time, I will use whole milk and perhaps reduce the sugar by a teensy bit. I wouldn't mind experimenting with other fruits--strawberries, apricots, cherries. The blueberries tasted great in the muffins, much better than in the pie, and they produced such a lovely deep, royal purple-blue color.

Blueberry Muffins (from AllRecipes)
Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cups white sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1 cup fresh blueberries

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Prepare a muffin tin by lining the cups with cupcake liner. (This recipe makes 8 muffins, but I somehow stretched it to 9.)

Mix together all the dry ingredients in a large bowl. In a measuring cup with the capacity to hold at least 1 cup of liquid, pour in the oil, milk, and egg until the 1 cup mark is reached; now stir in the cup. Incorporate the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients, being careful to not overmix. When there is a trace of flour still unmixed, STOP and fold in the blueberries.

Divide the batter into the muffin tin. Bake for about 20-25 minutes until a cake tester comes out clean.

I hope you all have a great Thursday! The weekend is almost here!