Blue Blueberry Muffins

Novel: Blueberry Muffin Murder (Hannah Swensen, #3)
Author: Joanne Fluke
As the title recipe for the third novel in the Hannah Swensen series, Joanne Fluke's Blue Blueberry Muffins sounded too good not to try.  The recipe calls for 2 sticks of butter, blueberries and blueberry pie filling.  What's not to love?  When I read the list of ingredients and the easy-to-follow directions, I thought I have to try this!  


Joanne calls these muffins Blue Blueberry Muffins because the batter takes on a blue color after the blueberry pie filling is added.  This is what my batter looked like for my second attempt at making these muffins and true to her word, the blue hue did not stay once the muffins were done baking.

I've cooked the recipe twice and both times have been very happy with the taste of the muffins; however, I'm still having problems with the presentation.  The muffins have a buttery, sweet, crumble topping.  The first time I made the muffins, I failed to leave enough room in the muffin tins for the topping.  The crumble spread out over the tin and therefore cracked when I removed the muffins from the tray.  The second time I made the muffins, I made sure to leave room for the topping and pressed the topping in to the batter before baking.

I didn't have any cupcake liners for the second batch of muffins and although I greased the bottom of the pan, the muffins did not come out cleanly.  Again, they tasted great, but were not pretty enough to serve to anyone outside of family.  I was able to salvage two muffins to offer my work colleagues.

Tips for this Recipe:

• Definitely use liners
• Leave enough room for the topping.  I would use a 1/3 cup of batter for each muffin

What I Love About This Recipe:

• Wonderful buttery flavor
• Enough batter left over to make a small loaf of bread
• The topping, the topping, the topping

Variations:

• After I make the perfect batch of blue blueberry muffins, I want to try the same recipe with cherries and cherry pie filling.