blueberry corn muffins

There's a street light just outside our kitchen window and it's one of the romantic, old-fashioned kind we have here in the Hollywood Hills. It doesn't jerk on in an erratic fit like a florescent. It turns up slow and thoughtfully like it's on a dimmer and has the warm glow of an incandescent. Pre-baby, I considered it good luck when I happened to be awake early enough catch the magic moment when it faded off. Now I just call it morning. In the last five months, I've watched the sky turn light more times than the rest of my life combined. And while I adore my cozy bed (oh man, I could write a serious love letter), I do appreciate the special stillness of our quiet early mornings now. I have a mini sidekick. We hang out and have breast milk and coffee (respectively) while we chat. We watch the street lights turn off and the trash trucks rumble by and the birds flitting about the trees. I narrate the scene while he watches intently and babbles along and tries to put every single thing in his mouth.

This gloomy morning as Louis sat in his highchair, I stood in the kitchen eating a warmed up muffin that I had brought back from the deep freeze and I literally thought: this is a game changer. When a reheated muffin is a game changer, your life is either super depressing or it's gotten smaller, simpler, slower, and hopefully sweeter. Let's go with the latter.

But seriously: HAVE YOU EVER FROZEN A MUFFIN AND THEN REHEATED IT? It feels like the same kind of magic as the street light, an everyday, mundane miracle. Not unlike spending your days hanging out with an infant.

Blueberry Corn Muffins
recipe from Giada DeLaurentiis
makes 12

1-1/3 cups buttermilk*
2 large eggs
1 t vanilla extract
1-1/3 cup all-purpose flour, plus 1T
1-1/3 cup yellow cornmeal
3/4 cup sugar
1 T baking powder
3/4 t fine salt
1-1/2 sticks chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2" cubes
1-1/2 cups frozen blueberries (do not thaw)

*If you find yourself with no buttermilk (like I often do), just use regular milk plus the juice of one whole lemon. These muffins are great both ways.

Preheat oven to 400F. Line a muffin tin with paper liners. In a large bowl, combine the buttermilk, eggs and vanilla. Whisk well and set aside.

In a food processor, combine the 1-1/3 cups flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder and salt. Pulse a few times until mixed. Add the cold butter cubes and pulse 5-10 times until the butter is cut in finely and the mixture looks like coarse meal.

Pour the dry ingredients into the buttermilk/egg mixture and fold them in until just combined. Do not over mix.

In a medium bowl, toss the frozen blueberries with the 1T flour. Add them to the batter and gently mix them in.

Divide the batter amongst the 12 liners, mounding it up in the middle. Bake for 20-25 minutes until a tester comes out clean. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes and then remove to cool further on a rack.

If you wanna freeze these (or any muffins, for that matter), cool completely, wrap them individually in plastic wrap and then seal in a freezer bag. To reheat, stick them back in the muffin tin and pop them in a 350F oven until heated through, about 12 minutes. Try this and then tell me it's not magic.

xoxo
jolie