Muffins

I think I may have mentioned before that while I can cook like crazy, I never really baked until relatively recently. I think when I was pregnant is when it really started, because all I wanted to eat were baked goodies. Now I have added muffins to my repertoire. I was inspired by an episode of "America's Test Kitchen". They have yet to fail me on perfect recipes. These muffins were no exception. Perfect!
They have a few tricks. One is to use buttermilk. Another is to make a sugar and lemon zest topping to put on the muffin tops before baking, which gives them a super good, crystalline wonderfulness. The main trick though, is to make a condensed fruit jelly to mix in to the batter, besides just having the whole blueberries. You cook down some blueberries and a little sugar and then swirl it into the batter once you have that poured into the muffin pan. This makes for the best muffins we have ever tasted!
On my second go-around (we don't want to waste the excess buttermilk!) I found that I didn't have enough blueberries left to make both the jelly part, and have the whole ones in the batter. So I made the jelly out of raspberries instead, and still used blueberries for the whole fruit. This set was even better than the first!
We have enough buttermilk left for one more set of muffins, and I am definitely making the mixed berry version again. Good job Test Kitchen!