Chidi’s Blueberry Muffins

I recently finished watching all four seasons of The Good Place, a comedy series about the afterlife, on Netflix. It is funny, and each episode is only 22 minutes long.

My favourite characters are Janet, a cheery personal assistant, and Chidi, one of the humans who is in the afterlife.  To celebrate my finishing The Good Place, I wanted to bake something. As Janet does not eat, I decided to make blueberry muffins, which have a pivotal role in a number of episodes set in Australia, where Chidi is teaching moral philosophy at the fictional St Johns University. 

Chidi’s biggest problem is his indecisiveness, to the point where he has trouble choosing a muffin from the wonderfully named coffee cart, We Crumb From A Land Down Under. 

Source - Rock The Holy Grail 

Through various events, he becomes confident enough to choose a blueberry muffin each day. However, Chidi’s confidence is subsequently thrown into disarray when he is told that blueberry pickers are subjected to cruelty, which makes blueberry muffins against Chidi’s moral code.

 In honour of Chidi, I made these blueberry muffins from the Sarabeth’s Bakery cookbook (minus the streusel topping).   I only made 3 muffins, but the full recipe makes 10.

To make them, you will need:

1 orange

2/3 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup plus 1 tbspn milk

2 eggs

2 1/4 cups plain flour

1 cup light brown sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

Pinch of salt

1 cup blueberries

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Grease 10 holes of a muffin tin with butter.

Finely zest and juice the orange. You need 1/3 cup of juice.

In a small bowl, whisk together the oil, milk, eggs, juice and zest.  In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.  Add the blueberries to the mixture and fold in gently.

Divide the batter evenly between the 10 muffin tin holes, and bake for 10 minutes. Turn down the heat to 180 degrees Celsius and continue to bake for a further 15 minutes or until the muffins are cooked through when tested with a skewer.  Remove the muffins from the oven and turn out carefully onto a wire rack to cool.