 Bursting with fresh or frozen wild blueberries, you can enjoy these delicate muffins made with buttermilk, honey, and orange zest at any time of year. Wild blueberries are native to Canada and Maine. Smaller than regular (cultivated) blueberries, wild blueberries have less water, more flavor, and you can fit more blueberries per cup in a recipe. Wild blueberries also freeze well. Freezing fresh blueberries “sets” the color. Later, when you bake with frozen wild blueberries, your baked treats will taste good and look good. The wild blueberries for these muffins were frozen in August and used for baking the next June, retaining their vibrant blue color. Typically, cultivated blueberries from North America are in season from April to September (the further north you live affects when blueberries are available in your area). Wild blueberry season starts in late July and ends in early September. Because wild blueberries are “wild” these berries will ripen in their own time. You can visit wild blueberry festivals in Canada and wild blueberry festivals in Maine. Not traveling through Canada or Maine during wild blueberry season? You can find fresh or frozen wild blueberries in your grocery store or you can buy frozen wild blueberries online: buy wild blueberries from Canada or buy wild blueberries from Maine. (I am not paid for these suggestions.) (Frozen) Wild Blueberry Muffins Video Wild Blueberry Muffins Ingredients
How to Make Wild Blueberry Muffins with Frozen or Fresh Blueberries (12 muffins) Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Spray a 12-cup muffin pan with baking spray. Place the muffin pan on a baking pan and set aside. Melt the unsalted butter and let cool. (Don’t have unsalted butter? No worries. Use salted butter and omit the salt in the recipe.)  Zest the orange over a sheet of plastic wrap, then set aside the zest.  Squeeze the orange for the juice. Pour the 1/4 cup of orange juice through a strainer into a large glass measuring cup. (It’s likely you will have orange juice left over. Sip some freshly squeezed orange juice!) Add the 3/4 cup buttermilk to the 1/4 cup of orange juice to make 1 cup.  Then, whisk the eggs, honey, and melted butter into the glass measuring cup.  In a large bowl, add the sugar and orange zest. Rub the sugar and orange zest together with your fingertips, until the sugar is moist and fragrant with the orange zest. Then, add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into the sugar mixture and whisk together. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and with a whisk or spatula, stir to blend gently but quickly. The batter will be bubbly.  Pour the wild blueberries (frozen, but not thawed or fresh) into the batter and stir gently to combine.  Scoop the batter evenly among the 12 muffin cups. (You can use a cookie dough scoop, but an ice cream scoop is just the right size.) Bake for 22-25 minutes. To test doneness, a toothpick or cake tester inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean or with a few dry crumbs.  Transfer the muffin pan to a wire rack and cool for 5 minutes before carefully removing each muffin to a wire rack to cool completely.  See more Recipes to Bake: Chocolate Marshmallow Pies Blackberry Lemon Cake Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins Mini Chocolate Tarts Raspberry Buttermilk Cake  Comments are closed.
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