Lemon Ginger Blueberry Muffins

After Amy left, she went to Seattle and had her second birthday party. The girl celebrates her birthday like I do! Anyway, Aaron and I hadn’t been up to Seattle in forever, Lindsay was just finishing up her pediatrics rotation there, our friend had had a baby months before, and Renai lives there, so we decided to visit everyone and go to the party. Renai was gracious enough to let us stay at her apartment in Ballard, so I decided to make “Thank You For Letting Us Stay At Your House” muffins for her.

She’s a huge fan of ginger, like me, so I knew I had to do something with that. I also really was in the mood to make lemon blueberry muffins. That’s when I decided to make something up and hope for the best. I got the base of the muffins from here (with modifications, of course), the ginger idea from here, and the lemon idea from my own brain. I think these turned out to be pretty good. Sorry about the picture being so dark. My current camera is from 2002. Hopefully that will be changing soon.

Lemon Ginger Blueberry Muffins:

Makes 12

6 Tb. unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 c. packed brown sugar
½ c. skim milk
1 large egg
1 c. all-purpose flour
½ c. whole wheat flour
1½ tsps. baking powder
1 Tb. ground ginger
½ tsp. salt
Juice of ½ lemon
About 2 tb. lemon zest
5 ½ Tb. minced candied ginger
2 Tb. brandy
1 ½ c. blueberries
Raw sugar for muffin tops

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Put liners in muffin cups.



Mix ginger, lemon zest, and brandy in a small bowl and set aside.





Whisk together butter, brown sugar, milk, and egg in a bowl until combined well. Whisk together flour, baking powder, ground ginger, and salt in a large bowl. Add milk mixture and stir until just combined. Stir in ginger mixture. Fold in blueberries gently.



Divide batter among muffin cups. Sprinkle tops with raw sugar and bake until golden brown and a wooden pick inserted into center of a muffin comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes.

I thought these were fantastic. So did Renai’s cat. Lindsay called them sushi muffins because the taste of ginger reminds her of sushi. I kind of like that name. I might mess around with these a bit, but mostly, I like the way they are and I like making things up.