Invite Me Back Muffins- 100 Recipes Every Woman Should Know

One of my favorite places to get cookbooks is at Amazon.com.  The bookstore is always the best place, because I can browse through and see how many recipes I may actually make, but Amazon suggests new ones for me and I can check out reviews to see how other people liked them.  This cookbook came across my radar in a magazine article.  The full title of the book is "100 Recipes Every Woman Should Know; Engagement Chicken and 99 Other Fabulous Dishes to Get You Everything You Want in Life".  It was put together through Glamour magazine based on a roast chicken recipe that was rumored to entice a man's proposal.  Ridiculous?  Yes, completely, but the book has a whole chapter about it with stories from readers over the years whom this worked for.  For the record, I haven't made the recipe yet but it does look pretty tasty.  What I love about the book is the fun titles of each recipe; like "Who Calls a Meeting at 5pm Stir Fry" and "Bikini Season Baked Salmon".  I had some blueberries on hand, so I chose the bawdy "Invite Me Back Muffins" as my muffin recipe of choice.  It had items that I already had on hand and it also featured a crumble topping, which I love on my muffins!! 

I ran the idea by John yesterday and he wanted to make muffins with me for breakfast.  He can be a tough nut to cook with sometimes.  He's only 3 1/2 so he gets distracted and wants to eat right away.  Sometimes he can be adorable; sometimes I can't believe I thought cooking together would be a fun idea.  I decided to make it easy on both of us and prepped as much as possible the night before.  Originally I was going to make a half recipe, but messed up on my recipe conversions early on and had to go back and just make the full one instead of starting over.  I combined 2 cups of flour with baking soda and salt.  Covered it, and set aside for the next morning.  Then I combined a 1/3 cup of flour with 1/2 cup of sugar and some cinnamon.  Covered and set aside.  The next morning, John was excited to make muffins!  The first thing we did was melt a 1/4 cup of butter and slowly combined it with the flour/sugar/cinnamon combo.  Once it was all combined, I put it in the freezer.  We measured out some sugar and mixed with a stick of unsalted butter that I had left out overnight to soften.  I took out the hand mixer, which he thought was the coolest thing ever.  He held it with me and helped turn the bowl as we creamed the butter and sugar together.  He then poured in the flour mixutre and milk in alternating batches while I kept on mixing.  He turned to me at one point while we were doing this, kissed my cheek, and said "I like making muffins with you, Mommy".  Sigh.....this was definitely one of those adorable times that I was happy to have him there!  When it was finished, we folded in the rinsed blueberries and got ready to bake! 

I preheated the oven to 450 and got out the muffin tin.  Being that I just about never make muffins, I only have one tin that cooks 6 so we had 2 batches in our future.  We put liners in the tins (I had elmo ones on hand from forever ago) and spooned in the batter.  We took the crumble topping out of the freezer and sprinked it onto the batter.  This was John's favorite part; he kept sneaking bites of the topping while we sprinkled it on the muffins.  We put them in the oven for 5 minutes and then turned the oven down to 375.  The recipe called to cook the muffins for about 20 minutes or until they were springy to the touch.  It took about 22 minutes and they were ready!  I put the tin on a baking rack for 10 minutes, then took the muffins out and put together the next batch myself.  John had completely lost interest at this point.  Once they were ready, he perked up and did a little dance which was pretty hilarious.  His "muffin dance"!  They were fantastic!  Another baking success.  The blueberries weren't too tart, the batter wasn't too sweet or too springy (my personal complaints about many muffins) and the crumble topping was so delicious.  I yielded 11 muffins; we each ate one and I plan on bringing leftovers to work to take away the temptation of more muffins.  Next time I'll try a healthier muffin variety, but I love that my baking skills are slowly improving. 

Invite Me Back Muffins

Crumble Topping (optional)
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 cup butter, melted
Muffins
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 stick unsalted butter (1/2 cup), softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2/3 cup milk
2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries (if using frozen, do not defrost them first, but toss them in a few tsps of flour before stirring them into the mix in step 3)
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Spray a 12 cup muffin tin with cooking spray or line the cups with paper or foil liners; you can also use eight 5-oz ramekins, spritzed with cook spray, instead.
Make the crumble topping: In a medium bowl, using your fingers, mix all of the crumble ingredients until small clumps form. Put the mixture in the freezer to chill and firm up while you work on the batter.
Make the muffins: In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt. In a large bowl, with a mixer on high speed, beat the butter and sugar until creamy. Add the eggs one at a time and beat on medium speed between additions until smooth. Add the flour mixture in 2 batch, alternating with the milk, beating on low speed between additions until just combined. Fold in the blueberries.
Spoon the batter into the prepared cups, filling all the way to the top. Sprinkle with the crumble topping (if using). Bake for 5 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 375 and bake for about 20 minutes longer (or more if in ramekins), until the muffins spring back when lightly touched with a finger. Set the pan on a rack and let cool for 15 minutes. Carefully remove the muffins from the pan, running the flat side of a knife gently around their sides to loosen them, if necessary.
Recipe from 100 Recipes Every Woman Should Know by Cindi Leive and the Editors of Glamour