Blueberry Muffins

1/4 cup butter

1/3 cup sugar

1 egg

1/2 cup milk

1 1/2 cups flour

1 tblsp baking powder

1/2 cup blueberries (frozen are ok & are cheaper)



These are kinda pretty much stolen from Fannie Farmer's book (http://www.bartleby.com/87/) - which isn't a bad place to steal from. They are much better than those cupcakelike things you can buy. However, don't be beguiled by children who inveigle you into baking them in order to impress you with their ability to consume food with "things" in them ... and then take two bites and leave you with 5.5 muffins containing over 1k calories total.

Cream the butter ( see note below)

Add sugar; then beat in the egg

Mix flour with baking powder

Alternately add milk and flour
(this means add a little milk, then a little flour, then a bit more milk, then a bit more flour....)

Add Blueberries or not - "Things" are always optional

Do not overbeat muffins! It will make them pointy-headed. (see Note 2 below)

Grease muffin pan and put batter in pan

Bake in preheated 350F oven for about 20/25 minutes

Note 1: Apparenty, due to a sudden rise in illiteracy, cook books are dumbing down their vocabularies. See the following from a recent article in the Washington Post:

"At Kraft Foods, recipes never include words like "dredge" and "sauté." Betty Crocker recipes avoid "braise" and "truss." Land O' Lakes has all but banned "fold" and "cream" from its cooking instructions. And Pillsbury carefully sidesteps "simmer" and "sear."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/17/AR2006031701969.html

You won't have that problem here - if you don't know what I'm talking about - starve for all I care, I'm not catering to illiterates.

Note 2: This has to do with gluten formation - too much beating increases gluten and you get tough muffins. This is also why there is bread flour for bread and cake flour for cakes - more gluten for bread and less for cakes. Muffins are tricky because they fall some where inbetween.
If you want to be technical and know all about gluten read this: http://www.baking911.com/howto/how_baking_works.htm