This week's SMS was chosen by Chaya of My Sweet and Savory: blueberry muffins with pecan crumble! Generally, I pride myself on getting my SMS post written before I go to bed on Saturday night, but this week I was so busy prepping for our Mother's Day brunch that I just didn't get to it. It worked out well in the end, though, since I served these muffins as part of the brunch and can now comment on how they were. Had I written my post last night I would only have been able to comment on their appearance - mainly because I scaled this recipe WAY back to only make 3 muffins and thus had to save all of them for today. I prepared two types of scones to go with the muffins and since there were only 6 of us for brunch, making any more than 3 muffins would have resulted in a ton of leftovers!
The Sweet Melissa Sundays group has actually made a few other muffins already which use this recipe as their base - the first time wasn't entirely successful but the second attempt was much better. What I've learned is that the muffins turn out much less dense if I cut back on the flour just a bit and also add slightly more liquid (depending on the juiciness of the fruit). I didn't take precise measurements to share this time - it was more a matter of judging the consistency of the batter and adjusting accordingly (I was more precise last time if you want some guidance). Another reason for the lack of exact measurements - scaling the recipe back as much as I did this week required some creative math and I had to estimate some of the measurements because they were so small (.089 cups and 1/32 teaspoon for example!). I substituted lemon zest for orange zest but otherwise didn't swap any of the ingredients. I contemplated skipping the pecan crumble topping because I was short on time, but didn't in the end because I remembered how fantastic the gingersnap crumble was when we made it. My muffins baked in about 1/2-2/3 of the time specified by the recipe which I'm sure was primarily due to the fact that there were only 3 of them in the oven.
Fortunately, I could tell the muffins weren't dense when I pulled them from the oven yesterday. The base felt tender and light, so that was a good sign! I didn't try one of the muffins today but Shane's parents split one and really enjoyed it! I always feel a little bad when I make something and then ask others to describe their thoughts in detail when they try it so I can relay the information back for the blog, so today I didn't :) Thanks to Chaya for hosting this week's selection! The muffins were a nice addition to our brunch! You can find the recipe on her blog or in The Sweet Melissa Baking Book.
