Made from Home Daily: Browned Butter Blueberry Muffins

Browned butter. Have you tried it yet? It seems to be the newest "thing" for all baked goods...browned butter cookies, cake, pie, muffins, etc, etc. I hadn't tried it...until today. And wow...seriously! Butter is delicious as it is, but once browned...it takes on a caramel-y, toffee-like flavor that is amazing in sweet treats! And to be truthful, I have been browning butter for a long time (just not on purpose...and more like burnt butter...soooo not the same!).

Browned butter in blueberry muffins gives that extra deep sweet flavor that is seriously divine.

Browned Butter Blueberry Muffins

For the muffins:

1 stick of butter

1/3 cup milk

1 egg

1 egg yolk

1 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 cups flour

3/4 cup sugar

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp salt

2 cups blueberries

For the crumb topping:

3 tbsp cold butter

1/2 cup flour

3 1/2 tbsp sugar

Preheat oven to 350F.

Whisk the egg and egg yolk with the milk and vanilla in a medium sized bowl.

In a saucepan, add the 1/2 cup, or 1 stick, of butter. This will make your browned butter. Melt the butter over medium heat, stirring until it just starts to turn brown (in last pic). There will be foam as the butter melts that will stay white, so make sure to stir so you can see when the butter starts to turn brown. The difference of browned butter and burnt butter is a mere second or two. Once it starts to look the color of caramel, take off the heat and continue to stir around for a minute.

Whisk the butter into the egg/milk mixture. Whisk well while adding so that the hot butter doesn't curdle the eggs. Keep whisking for a minute or two until well combined.

While you are making the muffin mix, go ahead and get your blueberries prepped. My blueberries were frozen, which is just fine. You can use fresh or frozen. I typically buy a ton when they are in season and freeze them for later use. Either fresh or frozen, I toss my blueberries with about a tbsp or two of flour. You want enough flour to lightly coat the blueberries but not give you lots of extra flour. This helps the blueberries to mix well into the muffin mix and not just sink to the bottom of the muffins when cooking. Let sit until ready to add.

This is were most recipes will tell you to get another bowl and mix your dry ingredients...I don't go to all that trouble (to me, it means washing an extra dish...and this is a food blog, not a cleaning blog, for a reason...I don't enjoy cleaning). I add the salt and baking soda to the wet ingredients and whisk well.

Go ahead add the dry ingredients. The mix will be like cookie dough.

Add the blueberries and lightly mix. Don't go stir crazy or your berries will get mushed and the batter will be a greyish blue color...

Take a large spoon, or scoop, and add the blueberry muffin mix to your cupcake pan. I didn't fill the cups very full and made 18 muffins. If you want to fill them more, you would probably get a dozen.

To make the topping, add the sugar and flour, along with the cold butter, to a bowl and use a trusty 'ole fork to combine until you get crumbs. You can see there are still some larger chunks of butter...this is fine.