What She Cooked: 2014

     A few weeks ago, while out for breakfast with my parents in Maine, my Dad ordered a blueberry corn muffin that he ended up sharing with Wren. We have found that Wren will eat whatever my Dad eats. Even if she has just had lunch herself, if my Dad sits down to eat she climbs up and needs to eat again with him. He thinks she uses him for food.
   It was while we were driving to Maine that I kept catching myself look at my Dad driving from the backseat and feeling overwhelmed with gratitude that at that very moment I could see him and if I wanted to talk to him. A little over two months ago, he had a heart attack out of the blue-as if those kind of things are ever actually planned. Being the worrier that I am, thoughts of something happening to my parents have always crossed my mind, but up until this point, I never had any read reason to worry. But in an instant, all of our lives were changed. So while I now have more real reasons to worry-I try as often as I can to just be thankful. My Dad is the one who keeps me sane and teaches me over and over again to look at the world through the eyes of others instead of just my own.
    So back to that muffin. Yesterday, we celebrated my Dad's 55th birthday-a day that suddenly felt a lot more significant than it had in years past. My Dad loves good food and desserts but he has been doing a really good job of trying to limit these things from his daily life. Being a simple kind of guy, he is always really tough to find a really thoughtful gift for. However, he is usually the most appreciative of the meals I make or the desserts I create. So for his birthday, blueberry corn muffins seemed like the best way to show him just how much I love him. Wren and I baked a batch and filled them with as much love as we could pack in!

Blueberry Corn Muffins
Adapted from a Martha Stewart Recipe

Ingredients
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature *
3/4 cup sugar, plus 2 tablespoons for sprinkling
3 tablespoons honey
2 eggs
3 cups whole wheat flour flour
1 cup yellow cornmeal
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup milk
1 cup blueberries

*In typing up this recipe now, I realize that I only used 1/2 a cup of butter! Reducing the butter probably made the muffins a little crunchier, but they were still really delicious!

Method
Preheat over to 375 degrees
1. Place paper lines in regular size muffin tin. (Martha used jumbo sized tins and her recipe only made 6 muffins. I made 30 regular sized muffins!)
2. Place butter, sugar, and honey in a bowl and mix on medium using an electric mixer. This mixture should be fluffy.
3. Add in the eggs and beat for 1 minutes.
4. Whisk together the cornmeal and baking powder in a separate bowl. Add to the butter mixture and beat until combined.
5. Continue to beat on low and slowly add the milk.
6. Next fold in the blueberries before adding the batter to the muffin tin.
7. Brush the tops of the muffins with cold water and then sprinkle sugar over each one.
8. Bake until the tops of the muffins are brown and a toothpick comes out clean-about 20 minutes.