Warrior Beetle: Surprise! It's Blueberry!*

*I realise that in revealing the contents of these muffins ahead of time calling them "Blueberry Surprise Muffins" becomes rather superfluous, but I like the name "Blueberry Surprise Muffins" so I'm going to go ahead and call them that because it's fun.

THINGS I LEARNED YESTERDAY

There is something called a Boiler Emergency Switch.
We have one.
Ours is located just to the right of the cellar door, helpfully concealed behind a large mirror because Mum thought it was ugly.
Our boiler repair man takes his cats on vacation with him.
Cleaning up a spectacularly spilled carton of grits is incredibly time consuming.
Those little bastard grains get EVERYWHERE. Including places you are pretty damn sure never had grits in them in the first place. Like, on the other side of the room.
Remember in The Secret Life of Bees when Lily's father T Ray makes her kneel on grits on the kitchen floor? IT IS BASICALLY THE WORST PUNISHMENT EVER BECAUSE THAT HURTS LIKE NOTHING YOU WOULD BELIEVE.

All I could think of yesterday, apart from how pervasive grits are on a kitchen counter, was Peter in Blueberry Land by Elsa Beskow, one of my childhood favs:

Granted, when you go back and read it again as an adult, it's actually kind of creepy and involves giant slugs, enslaved mice, indentured squirrels, and a vaguely fascist Blueberry King with his identical and mildly cultish sons, but the overall takeaway still stands: BLUEBERRIES ARE THE BEST.

These are not the tiny and wonderful Maine ones but they ARE from the farm down the road,
so I'm happy enough using them. And they are delicious.

It had to be Blueberries again this week. I mean, we went to a BLUEBERRY FESTIVAL this weekend so as you can imagine what with hayrides and tractor pulls and an entire cooking station devoted to blueberry pancakes with whipped cream we both sort of lost our heads and both sort of bought about a million pints. And we threw raspberries and strawberries in there too, because, what the hell. BUT. Blueberries needed to be used.

Once again I had the possibility of making Blueberry Cheesecake (I will do this, at some point, I will!) but I wasn't feeling it. The weather has been lovely, but on the chilly side, and it just didn't seem warm and hazy enough to justify cheesecake. I was pondering it as I lay in bed yesterday morning, listening to the soothing sound of the cat trying to break down the door from the other side, and suddenly decided that the best course of action, CLEARLY, was to take the Blueberry Topping from a Martha Stewart cheesecake recipe, make it, and shove it inside a corn muffin.

DUH.

I am calling these Blueberry Surprise Muffins. As stated above, the appellation is slightly redundant because a) I'm straight up telling you what the surprise is and b) you can totally see the aforementioned "surprise" because it comes through the tops and sides of the muffins. But I love the name "Blueberry Surprise Muffins", don't you?

Yes. Yes you do.

The corn muffin recipe is from perhaps one of the most old school Yankee cookbooks I own, Judy Gorman's Breads of New England, which even goes so far as to have been published by Yankee Magazine itself. If that's not proper New England cooking, I don't know what is.

It practically comes with its own LLBean pullover and a bag of self-rolled oats.

BLUEBERRY SURPRISE MUFFINS

INGREDIENTS

3 cups blueberries
3/4 cups sugar
2 tbs butter
2 tbs lemon juice
1 tbs corn starch

Cook all of this together in a saucepan until the berries go soft and dissolve and it's bubbling nice and thickly. Martha says 4 minutes. I let mine go for closer to 10.

And now for the muffins:

1 1/4 cups corn meal
1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
1/4 cup sugar
3 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1 cup milk
2 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup (4 tbs) butter, melted

Whisk together corn meal, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Add in the milk, beaten eggs, and melted butter and stir until it's all nicely combined. The batter will be very thick, but that's corn muffins for you. Add more milk if it needs to be slightly wetter.

And once you've got everything ready to go . . .

Line a muffin tin with paper cups. Spoon a small amount of batter into each one, then follow with a spoonful of the blueberry, then top it off with more batter.

Bake them at 400 degrees for 20 - 25 minutes (I went to 30 but that's my oven and the size of the muffins) until the tops are golden and crackly.

BEETLE NOTES

Judy Gorman knows her stuff. This is a FANTASTIC corn muffin recipe. I know that because Mum almost NEVER likes corn muffins (too dry, too wet, too sweet, eating muffins is like eating cupcakes eg stupid, the paper is dumb and peely and messy, you look stupid eating them especially standing up or in public, people always eat them for breakfast and why would you do that they're so big and sticky and how could you eat that much in the morning, etc. etc. etc.) but these, she likes. She said so. Multiple times. WINNER. From what I could gather, these are moist, crunchy, not too sweet, comforting in the extreme, and decidedly yummy.

I switched out the all-purpose flour for whole wheat. I love a good whole wheat muffin, especially where blueberries are concerned. For the corn meal, Judy says "coarse ground" and goes so far as to call these muffins "Crunchy" in the title. Being Hillbilly Beetle, I used up the last of the regular ground cornmeal we had in the fridge, and supplemented with grits to make up the difference. (See above re: pervasiveness of grains once spilled onto your counter and pain re: kneeling on them.)

The addition of a blueberry centre is also a HUGE WIN. Last night she had one for dessert, cooled to room temperature, and pronounced it wonderful. This morning she had one toasted in the oven, with the centre returned to gooey jammy hotness. This, I think, was pronounced "even better" but said pronouncement was delivered silently through a huge mouthful, accompanied by much eye rolling, so it's a best guess. I'm going to go with "even better" and say that the vote falls in favour of toasted.*

*LL's take note for when you get these this afternoon! If you can spare a moment, do toast them in the kitchen downstairs.

The Blueberry Topping of previous note is actually a total win in and of itself. I have been instructed to make the same, occasionally with other berries as they come, as a spread of sorts for muffins, toast, and other warm crunchy breakfast items. We now know this because I had half a bowl of it left over, and rather than throw it out (I am a Yankee after all. I would rather cut off my own finger than waste half a bowl of blueberries.) I saved it and presented it as a butter alternative.