50th Anniversary Recipes
In celebration of our Golden Anniversary and 50 years of Baking, Gay Lea Foods is proud to partner with BetterBaking.com in presenting specially created Ontario heritage butter recipes, created by Marcy Goldman and BetterBaking.com
A Marcy Goldman/BetterBaking.com © Recipe Created for Gay Lea, in honor of the 50th Anniversary of Gay Lea
Bumble Berry Muffins
Canadians are familiar with famed Bumble Berry Pie but now this outstanding companion treat of Bumble Berry Muffins, featuring a crunchy halo of vanilla pecan streusel. The taste of Gay Lea's unsalted butter makes these muffins sing. If you've had store-bought or coffee-shop muffins, you know they can leave that nasty greasy taste and texture - almost a film that sticks to the roof of your mouth. No doubt that is commercial, baker's margarine or shortening. Real butter is what you need. Plus anything baked with butter, also freezes that much better. This is a statuesque muffin, replete with a berry quartet of blackberries, raspberries, touches of cranberries and blueberries. If you are missing one berry or another, substitute finely diced rhubarb for a bit of tang that is still vintage Canadiana. My baker's trick here is to freeze or semi-freeze the berries on trays (unless you have them on hand, frozen) to ensure they do the batter without breaking up and discoloring the batter.
Vanilla Pecan Streusel
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons all purpose flour
1/2 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
3/4 cup pecans, finely chopped
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Muffin Batter
2 1/3 cups brown sugar, firmly packed
1 cup unsalted butter
2 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 teaspoon lemon juice
4 1/2 - 5 cups all-purpose flour, approximately
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1 1/2 cups buttermilk, or more
3 cups semi-frozen berries, any combination of blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, and coarsely ground cranberries
Preheat oven to 425 F. Arrange oven rack to highest position or position in to be in the upper third of the oven.
Spray 12 - 16 large muffin cups with nonstick cooking spray and line with paper muffin liners. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and put muffin tins on it.
For the Streusel Topping, in a medium bowl, or food processor, blend the butter and the flour, pecans, brown sugar, cinnamon and vanilla and pulse to make a coarse topping. Set aside.
In large bowl blend the sugar with the melted butter. Briskly whisk in the eggs and vanilla. Fold in the flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and cloves, holding back a cup of the flour, and blend somewhat before blending in the buttermilk. Batter should be quite thick; if not, add in more of the flour (but when you add in the frozen fruit, batter will firm up so wait to see if you need more flour and then add in a tablespoon at a time). Gently fold in the berries, trying not to break them apart.
Using a large ice-cream scoop, deposit batter into prepared muffin cups, loading them as much as you can. If the batter does not stay put, you need to add more flour (so, add more flour to the rest of the batter before scooping). You need almost a scoop and a half of batter. Deposit tops of muffins with equal amounts of topping. If some falls off, just gently put it back on.
Bake 20 minutes at 425 F and then reduce temperature to 375 F and bake until muffins spring back when gently touched with fingertips about 12 more minutes and muffins are golden brown.
Dust with confectioners' sugar
Makes 12-16 large muffins