SHF - Berries - Blueberry Muffins with Crumb Topping

This month, Susan from Food Blogga is hosting Sugar High Friday, created by Jennifer, The Domestic Goddess. Susan's theme centres around one of my favourite ingredients - berries! Most fresh berries are not in season in Australia, it being the middle of a bitter, cold winter in the southern states; however, I froze quite a few punnets of berries while they were plentiful and cheap during the summer.

About 12 months ago, my "sending" Blogging by Mail buddy was Katie B of Other People's Food. In my BBM package, Katie enclosed her favourite blueberry muffin recipe, extracted from Food & Wine Magazine in February 2007. She says that her husband loves these muffins, even though he hates fruit muffins. I figured if you can convince a fruit muffin hating fella to eat these muffins, they must be good, and I have always meant to try them. Sadly, until now, I just never got around to it. However, with my last punnet of blueberries in the freezer, I decided to make Katie's blueberry muffins for SHF. Here are the results:

These muffins have a lovely golden crumb topping encasing the fluffy blueberry part underneath - however, I had some kamikaze blueberries try and escape through the top of the muffins during the cooking process :) They do taste very good, especially served warm - mmm, mmm. Thanks for the recipe Katie!

If you would like to try out Katie's blueberry muffins, you will need:

Crumb topping

1 cup plain flour
3 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons white sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
6 tablespoons melted butter

Muffins

1 3/4 cups plain flour
2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup canola oil
3/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups blueberries

Preheat your oven to 190 degrees Celsius and line a 12 hole muffin tin with cupcake liners.

To make the crumb topping, combine all of the topping ingredients in a bowl and pinch to form pea-size clumps.

To make the muffins, whisk the flour, baking powder and salt together and set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat together the sugar, eggs and canola oil, then beat in the milk and vanilla. Finally, beat in the flour mixture on low speed until just combined. Stir the blueberries through the batter with a wooden spoon, then divide the batter among the muffin tin holes (fill no more than 3/4 full). Sprinkle the crumb topping over each muffin, and bake the muffins for 30 minutes or until cooked. Allow the muffins to cool in the tin for about 10 minutes before turning out to cool completely.

Serve on their own, or with cream or icecream - delicious!

Thanks to Susan for being this month's emergency SHF host, and I look forward to the roundup.