Blueberry Lavender Muffins
muffins, berries, blueberries, lavender
Each bite of these muffins is a joy! There’s a blueberry bursting in every bite. The sweet buttery and crumble topping adds another layer of texture to each bite along with the perfectly moist, tender and balanced amount of crumble. They are fluffy and fragrent and so irresistible. This is paired with the subtle scent and flavour of lavender which hits the tastebuds and the nostrils all at the same time. These have to be my favourite little small batch of muffins to make on any given day because they are so easy and so quick to make and they are a joy to eat with a cup of coffee or tea. The lavender addition is ofcourse optional but recommended if you wanted to try something a little different to flavour the muffins. This is a great bowl and whisk recipe you will love - Enjoy!
Lavender and Blueberry?
Let’s talk lavender. Fresh or dried, lavender is one of those scents that is soothing and so wonderful. Using fresh lavender to infuse the sugar would be wonderful but I don’t always have fresh lavender on hand so I used dried and it worked great to infuse that beautiful scent to the muffins. It lends well to the flavour of these muffins. I love warm spices and scents like this lavender with anything blueberry. The two seem to pair very well and the lavender always tends to bring out the fruity taste in berries in general and also brings out the sweetness in them. I love it but if you aren’t a fan then just omit it, but it is worth trying it. It’s subtle and very delicate. If you ARE a fan of lavender and think the infusion is too subtle feel free to add a little more. I wouldn’t add more than an extra ¼ tsp though because adding too much can impart some bitterness, so just a caution.
Blueberry Lavender Muffin Recipe Ingredients
- Butter - unsalted, melted and cooled slightly - best part - no need to wait for it to be softened and no need to cream it either
- Sugar - granulated sugar is all you need
- Lavender - I used dried food grade lavender and just a little goes a long way - feel free to omit if you prefer these blueberry muffins without it (its subtle but a nice hint of flavour)
- Lemon Zest - adds an extra bit of flavour - feel free to use more or less to taste
- Yogurt - feel free to use either plain yogurt or greek yogurt of feel free to also use sour cream in its place
- Egg- all you need is one for this recipe and make sure its room temperature
- Vanilla Extract - use pure vanilla extract for best flavour - I add a touch of it to all my sweet baked goods
- Baking Powder, Baking Soda & Salt - for leavening
- Flour - I use all purpose flour for this recipe but it will work with a good 1-1 gluten free all purpose flour
- Blueberries - I like to use fresh but frozen will work too - if using frozen just toss them in a little bit of flour to coat them lightly before adding them to the batter (no need to thaw them)
- For the Crumb Topping - flour, brown sugar, granulate sugar, baking powder, butter and a pinch of salt
How To Make These Blueberry Lavender Muffins
- Mix your crumb topping ingredients together, set aside
- Melt butter and allow cool while you prepare the rest of your ingredients
- Chop lavender and add it to the sugar along with the lemon zest and rub both into the sugar to infuse it
- Whisk sugar mixture into the butter followed by the egg and yogurt
- Whisk in the baking powder, baking soda and salt
- Sift in the flour
- Add the blueberries
- Fold flour and blueberries into mixture until just incorporated - do not overmix
- Use a spoon or cookie scoop to evenly distribute batter into 9 muffin liners in pan, top each with a couple extra blueberries if you would like
- Sprinkle over the crumb topping - pressing it in as needed
- Bake
Tips For Making These Blueberry Lavender Muffins
- Measure your ingredients carefully
- Ensure that your eggs and yoghurt are room temperature so that they mix in evenly into batter
- Sift the flour so that these muffins turn out light and fluffy
- Do not over mix batter otherwise it will not produce tender muffins but dense ones instead
- Make sure your oven is preheated before adding the muffins to oven to ensure cooking times are accurate
- Line you muffin tins with liners or spray or grease tin well to ensure easy release of your muffins
- To make blueberry muffins with frozen blueberries, add the frozen blueberries directly to the batter without thawing them. If you thaw frozen blueberries before baking them in these muffins, they will become mushy. And the mushy blueberries will bleed into your muffin batter, turning your muffins a blueish color. Just toss them in a bit of flour before adding them to the batter
Storage & Freezing
- STORAGE - These muffins are best eaten warm and right out the oven but leftover muffins should be stored in an airtight container at room temperature. If muffins are left exposed, the moisture starts to leak from them and they dry out. To store muffins up to 3-4 days, line an airtight container or zip-lock bag with paper towel and store the muffins in a single layer.
- FREEZING - Baked and cooled muffins can be stored in an airtight container in the freezer for up to 2 months. Thaw and warm them in the microwave or thaw them overnight in the fridge and warm them in microwave or oven
I’m actually quite shocked that this is my first blueberry muffin recipe on the blog. Shame on me. I do have other delicious blueberry baked goods on it but not muffins. Blueberry muffins are by far my favourite. If there’s ever a choice of what kind of muffin I want, it will always be blueberry. I never tire of it and I love to taste different ones and versions from different places. You know I always have a bit of a good story about my food experiences, so let me tell you how the love of blueberry muffins started.
There’s a little coffee shop in Canada called Tim Horton’s. You may or may not have heard of it. Ha ha! Anyways that is where it all began. I use to car pool with a girl I worked with. I hated it! She was nice enough but she usually ran late and made me late and she would talk about her cat non-stop. I love animals and all but I didn’t want to hear about them at 6:45 in the morning right through for an hour of our drive to work. Anyways she was a Chatty Cathy. She also needed to stop at Tim Hortons for her usual large steeped tea with milk and a blueberry muffin every morning. That is the part that usually made us late. There was always a crazy line up. Anyways this always used to annoy me because I usually had breakfast at home or would bring it along. Eventually she got me hooked though and I started with the large steeped tea, milk only, and a blueberry muffin. It was almost ritualistic and over the years it became our thing. The habit was formed and also the addiction to those blueberry muffins.
These are definitely better than those muffins. They might not be super sized like the ones at Tim Hortons but they are delicious. I worked along with Smitten Kitchen’s recipe for her perfect blueberry muffins which is a great recipe. Her recipe calls for 9 muffins but I usually get 10. It just depends how you spread the batter out. The more you spread it, the smaller the muffins obviously. I wanted a little more texture than just the sugar topping in her recipe so I used this crumble topping and of course I jazzed them up with the lavender.
They are perfect and I can’t resist them out of the oven. If there are leftovers the next day I will heat them in the oven and they are fab with a bit of butter. Overall a great recipe that I always make when I have a hankering for blueberry muffins and want to reminisce about my drives to work with Chatty Cathy. No for real though, I haven’t thought about all of that until I started thinking back to when I started loving these muffins and now I’m wondering how Jennifer is. Always fun to think about all the memories attached to foods. Hope you give these a try, I think you will love them with or without the lavender and with or without the crumble, although I recommend adding both!
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Recipe
Ingredients
For the muffins
- 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- ½ teaspoon dried lavender buds
- Finely grated zest from ½ a lemon (or 1 whole lemon if you prefer it more lemony)
- ¾ cup plain unsweetened yogurt or sour cream, room temperature
- 1 large egg, room temperature
- ½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1½ teaspoons baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour, sifted
- 1 ¼ to 1 ½ cups blueberries, fresh or frozen (no need to defrost if frozen) ¼ cup of flour to dust the frozen blueberries with before folding them into the batter (if using frozen only), plus a few extras to top muffins with
For the crumb topping
- ½ cup all-purpose flour
- 1 ½ tablespoons light brown sugar
- 1 tablespoons granulated sugar
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- Pinch of salt
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 375°F. Line 9 muffin cups with paper or foil liners or spray 2 muffin tins with cooking spray.
- In a medium bowl, combine the crumb topping ingredients - flour with the brown sugar, granulated sugar, baking powder and salt. Stir in the melted butter, then pinch the mixture or stir with a fork until it forms pea-size clumps and set aside. Add more flour if needed to achieve a crumb texture and then set aside.
- On a cutting board chop up the dried lavender. Add this and the lemon zest to the sugar, and use your clean and dry hands to work the lavender and lemon zest into the sugar massaging it into the sugar to infuse it and break down the lavender further.
- Melt butter in a large bowl and whisk in the sugar, lavender mixture, vanilla extract, yogurt and egg until smooth.
- Then sift in baking powder, baking soda, flour and salt
- Add blueberries, (If using frozen berries, lightly dust or toss them in some all purpose flour which will help prevent them from sinking to the bottom of the pan) then gently fold the flour and the berries into the batter. Batter will be very thick, like a cookie dough.
- Divide between prepared muffin cups and sprinkle each generously with crumb topping.
- Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until tops are golden and a tester inserted into the center of muffins comes out.
- Transfer the tin to a wire rack and allow the muffins to cool for 10 minutes before removing them and setting them to cool on the rack. Eat while still warm or at room temperature. They will be best on the first day but they freeze beautifully as well.
Recipe Notes
- I like to add a few extra blueberries to the top of the muffins pressing them into the batter a bit before sprinkling over the crumb topping
- I don’t recommend making these in to smaller size muffins unless you use a mini muffin tin - the recipe works best as 9 muffins - feel free to double the recipe for a larger batch
- The crumb topping is totally optional - feel free to finish these off with a sprinkling of coarse sugar or turbinado sugar instead of the crumb topping before baking
