Alton Brown’s Over the Top Blueberry Muffins

One of my oldest childhood memories is my dad taking me to a bakery near our old apartment in Scarborough, Ont., when he bought bread on Saturdays, and treating me to a freshly baked blueberry muffin. I still remember the smell of the bakery and the taste of that warm muffin.

This must be why I’m not a big fan of fruits in baked goods of any kind, but I’m a sucker for blueberry muffins.

And whenever I’m having a particularly stress-filled morning, and need a bit of a quick comfort, I reach for a muffin. That doesn’t bode well for my perpetual diet, I know, but sometimes I make a huge batch like this and freeze most of it.

If you know Alton Brown from television, you know he’s not your typical celebrity chef. He’s much more cerebral than the rest and uses science to explain what works and what doesn’t. Within days of seeing his blog post go up on his Facebook page, I was buying blueberries to make these muffins.

Like the rest of the world, except my colleague Phil, I prefer the muffin top, and this recipe is designed to produce bigger muffin tops.

This is one of those recipes you should print out, or pin to Pinterest, or bookmark, whatever – you’ll be turning to it time and time again.

It’s absolutely delightful – and that taste of orange zest is what sets it apart. Everyone commented on there being something a bit different, those with exacting palates knew it was the orange zest.

Here’s the recipe.

Substitutions:
None, but I think my muffin pans are much smaller than the standard because I had more than 12 muffins.
And whatever you do, don’t skip the last step to turn them out onto a tea towel. If you’ve gone to all this trouble to create these top heavy muffins, you want them nice and crispy.

If you do freeze them, pop them in the oven for a couple of minutes to get them slightly warm and crispy again. If you don’t care, the microwave will do the trick too. They just won’t be slightly crispy on the outside.

Would I make these again?
Yes, just as soon as my batch in the freezer runs out!

Grade: Five stars out of five. I dare you to find a better blueberry muffin recipe!