The Very Best Blueberry Muffins- Make Ahead and Bake in the Morning.

What is better than warm, fresh muffins on a weekend morning? The only thing that is better is mixing them up the day (or night) before, and having them all ready to pop into the oven. You can make the batter, fill your muffin cups, wrap and refrigerate to bake within 24 hours. Alternatively, you can make the batter, fill the cups, and freeze. When they are frozen, lift the frozen muffins out of the pan, put in a ziplock bag, and return the frozen muffins to the muffin tin, and bake them without defrosting.

This recipe works really well with any fruit (or chocolate chips) that you want to add. Because it is designed for making ahead and baking later the amounts of baking powder and soda are larger than a regular muffin recipe. So use another recipe if you want to bake right away. If you have it, you can substitute buttermilk for the yogurt and milk.

Ingredients:
3 cups all purpose flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp.  baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
10 Tbsp. butter
3/4 cup sugar (or 1 cup if you like things really sweet)
2 eggs (large)
rind of one lemon (microplaned)
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 cup plain yogurt (not fat free)
1/2 cup whole milk
1 1/2 cups blueberries (or raspberries, pitted, peeled, cut-up peaches, chocolate chips, dried cherries, or whatever fruit you like)
Coarse sugar (Sugar in the Raw, or Turbinado) for sprinkling

1. Spray a 12 cup muffin tin with pam, and fit with paper cupcake liners.

2. Sift together (or whisk) flour, baking powder, soda, and salt. Reserve.

3. Cream together butter and sugar in an electric mixer until fluffy, and add in eggs one at a time. Add half the dry ingredients, half the yogurt and milk, then the rest. Mix in the lemon peel and cinnamon. Remove from mixer.

4. Stir in the fruit. (I like to mash up about a third of the blueberries, and leave the rest whole). A nice touch is dusting the whole blueberries with a bit of flour before mixing them in, the flour keeps the berries suspended in the mixture better.

5. Scoop the batter evenly into the paper-lined muffin cups. Wrap tightly with plastic or foil, and refrigerate for up to a day.

To Bake:

Preheat oven to 425. Unwrap muffin tin.
Sprinkle each muffin with a teaspoon of coarse sugar,  and place muffin tin in lower third of oven to bake.
Bake at 425 for 10 minutes, then without opening oven, lower the temperature to 375 and bake until golden brown, about 20 minutes more. Cool on rack.

(If you are baking them from frozen the total baking time will be about 10 minutes more.)