Blueberry Muffins

Source: modified from Mel's Kitchen Cafe's "Best Blueberry Muffins"

Ingredients:
2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries
2/3 cup sugar
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (I've subbed up to 1 cup with white whole wheat flour and they're lovely and soft and perfect)
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce (the original recipe called for 1/4 cup melted butter, but I've subbed it for applesauce and haven't even missed the butter!)
1/4 cup oil (vegetable or canola)
1 cup buttermilk (I never have buttermilk on hand and used to always use the 1 cup milk + 1 TB lemon juice, which works great.  But lately I've started using 3/4 cup plain yogurt + 1/4 cup milk and I love that way, too!)
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions:
Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray a standard or mini muffin tin(s) with nonstick cooking spray.  (This recipe will make 12-16 standard muffins or ~48 mini muffins.) Rinse berries under cold water and spread on a double layer of paper towels to dry well.

Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a large bowl. Toss the berries that have dried on the paper towels in with the flour mixture. Whisk sugar and eggs together in a medium bowl until thick, about 45 seconds. Slowly whisk in the applesauce (or butter, if you go that route) and oil until combined. Whisk in the buttermilk and vanilla until combined. Using a rubber spatula, fold egg mixture into flour mixture until just moistened. The batter will be lumpy with a few dry spots of flour – don’t overmix. This is the key to moist and tender muffins.

Using a cookie scoop or spoon, fill the muffin cups until they are about 3/4 full.  Bake until the top of the muffins are golden and just firm, 17-18 minutes, for standard muffins, 11-14 minutes for mini muffins. Cool muffins in the muffin tin for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack and cool 5 minutes before serving.

Notes:
I tasted these little beauties once upon a time when Laurel had made them for something. (What/when was that?  I don't really remember, but it was at Paul and Kim's house in SoJo - maybe after they left on their mission and Laurel and Bret hadn't yet moved to CT?)  ANYWAY, they were darn delicious, so I asked her for the recipe and she said it was Mel's (of course) but that she didn't do any of the fancy lemon sugar or blueberry syrup steps.  Brilliant!  I tweaked them a bit more to my taste (didn't need nearly as much sugar, added wheat flour, subbed applesauce for butter, etc) and they are my go-to blueberry muffin recipe these days.