Cashelmara Inn and the Search for the Perfect Blueberry Muffin
April in New York City this year was dreadful - rainy, cold and miserable. Just the right month to exchange the woes of an unsuccessful spring for a delightful beachside vacation. This is just what my friend John did - he went on a 4-day beach vacation in mid-April…to Avon-by-the-Sea, NJ. While this certainly raised at least MY eyebrows, it had sense. As a reflectively white man, John does not do well in the throngs of scorching Caribbean rays; as a writer, he was looking for a reasonably priced, quiet, unhappening place where he could concentrate on finishing his play. So he booked a room at Cashelmara Bed & Breakfast Inn, bought a rain-resistant poncho and made the three-hour trip to the beach on his scooter.
I’ll admit, even though I made fun of him for going to the Jersey beach front in mid-April, I was also very jealous. New York City beaches are notoriously dirty and unfriendly to bathers. This doesn’t prevent me from getting inebriated and going for a swim anyway, but a thought of a nice, unpopulated beach and chilly waves made me nostalgic. My father and I used to camp out on the cliffs by the Crimean Black Sea when I was a child, for weeks at a time. We lived off the fish he caught and fresh produce we stocked up in a nearby town of Sudak. Alone among stretches of rock, juniper trees, waves and sunlight we would swim, snorkel and play card games by candlelight when it got too dark to engage in maritime activities.
I got a phone call from John when he returned to New York. Desperate for stories of beaches and quaint beachtown shops and bars, I invited him to my apartment on the same day. Stories were not the only things he brought back. The woman who owns Cashelmara makes stunning breakfasts every morning, complete with delicious home made muffins full of whatever ingredients inspire her that day. John grabbed a blueberry muffin on his way out, and was kind enough to bring it to me as a little traveling gift. The muffin was eaten way too quickly to requisition photos (it smelled so delicious I could barely contain my excitement), but I can wholeheartedly say that it was the most delicious blueberry muffin I have ever tasted in my life. The smell was mouthwatering, but the taste left me momentarily speechless. Perfectly sweet, slightly tart, covered in powdered sugar and containing tiny hints of baking soda, it melted in my mouth. I have been hunting for the perfect blueberry muffin recipe since then, trying a few and being disappointed every single time. Yesterday, I picked up two boxes of blueberries while food-shopping, on a two for $3 sale, and decided to give the muffins another try this afternoon. They’re not as good as that magical muffin I had in mid-April, but they are still delicious and deserve a spot in my recipe book.
Recipe adapted from Simply Recipes
Gentle blueberry muffins, these are perfect for a humid summer morning or a hot summer afternoon. They are just sweet enough to leave a slight sugary aftertaste, but the sweetness doesn’t interfere with the tartness of blueberries. Addition of yogurt (or sour cream in my case) keeps them moist, and keeps the dough fluffy. I would normally prefer a sturdier muffin, but these don’t fall apart when you pull them out of the muffin pan and firm up slightly after cooling down for a few hours. I bet they would taste delicious with a glass of cold blueberry lemonade, but that’s a theory I’ve yet to prove.
Blueberry Muffins Recipe:
3 cups of all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
10 Tbsp unsalted butter (1 1/4 stick), softened
1 cup sugar (if you prefer sweeter muffins, you can increase the sugar to 1 1/4 cups)
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cup plain yogurt (I substituted sour cream, because I didn’t have any yogurt)
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel (I skipped this because I was looking for a clean blueberry taste)
1 1/2 cups blueberries
1 Tbsp flour (if using defrosted frozen berries)
PREPARATION
Adjust the oven rack to the middle-lower part of the oven. Preheat oven to 375°F.
Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and set aside.
In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar together, beating until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating until incorporated after each one. Beat in the grated lemon peel if you are using it.
Beat in one third of the dry ingredients until just incorporated. Beat in one third of the yogurt. Beat in the second third of the dry ingredients. Beat in the second third of the yogurt. Beat in the remaining dry ingredients and then the remaining yogurt. Again be careful to beat until just incorporated. Do not over beat. Fold in the berries. If you are using frozen berries, defrost them first, drain the excess liquid, and then coat them in a light dusting of flour.
Use a standard 12-muffin muffin pan. Coat each muffin cup lightly with olive oil or grapeseed oil using a pastry brush, or with a little butter (I used remnants of the second stick of butter I had to break up for the recipe). Distribute the muffin dough equally among the cups. Bake until muffins are golden brown, about 25 to 30 minutes. Test with a long toothpick to make sure the center of the muffins are done. If the toothpick comes out clean, you’re all set. If it comes out wet, you need to keep them in for a few more minutes. Leave finished muffins to cool for 5 minutes. Remove muffins from the tin and serve slightly warm.
Those look really good! I will have to try out the recipe, planted two blueberry bushes this year, perhaps next year we will have a good crop to try out. In the meantime, I think I’ll be getting some blueberries from the store in the next few days.
They were good, only things I might try differently, if you like, would be to add a little vanilla (unless you really want just the pure blueberry flavor) and maybe a little more sugar. The sweetness in these was really subtle, so if you like your muffins sweet, I’d probably increase the sugar to 1 1/4 or 1 1/2 cups.
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