Blueberry Muffins with Streusel Topping

Friday is our "Breakfast for Dinner" night. Tonight's menu included blueberry muffin, scrambled egg, pork blueberry cinnamon sausage and broccoli. Again, I went straight to Cooks Illustrated and found a "best blueberry muffin" recipe that I had all the ingredients for. Well, I didn't have buttermilk but the recipe said to substitute with whole milk or skim milk with yogurt.

The recipe consisted of 3 parts: the streusel topping, the "blueberry jam" and the muffin part. Each was simple and straight forward; however I managed to mess up the streusel toppings. The recipe said to mix all the dry ingredients, drizzle warm butter on top and gently toss until moistened. I cleverly microwaved the butter, mixed and dissolved the sugar and then added flour all in the same bowl. This dough-like mixture really didn't look right so I started over again. The second batch of topping still came out looking strange. It resembled cookie dough more than the toppings commonly seen in a box mix.

Cooks Illustrated recipes definitely have many more steps compared to the mix from a box, but the muffin came out tasting fresh, healthy and honestly blueberry. The suspicious-looking topping came out crunchy and yummy. Unfortunately, I was already conditioned by the commercialized blueberry muffins made from a box. I felt that the honest blueberry muffins lacked certain taste such as lemon or cinnamon. Could I be thinking of the coffee cake from Hobee's? I also wonder if the muffins would have come out even better had I used butter milk. Perhaps the next time I will add some lemon zest and/or cinnamon to the streusel or maybe try the simple lemon sugar topping as suggested by Cooks Illustrated in the "best blueberry muffin recipe".

While we are on the subject of blueberry, I have to mention that Cooks Illustrated has an awesome recipe for blueberry scones. It's the best blueberry scone I've ever had!