Big Beautiful Muffin Top

This could very well be the most delicious and beautiful muffin or muffin loaf you have ever tasted.  Please have napkins ready to avoid drooling on your neighbor's muffin. That would be inappropriate.

Beautiful Blueberry Muffins

4-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2-1/4 cups white sugar
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
2 Tablespoons baking powder
1 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
1 cup milk or buttermilk
3 cups fresh blueberries

Preheat oven to 325*.  Prepare loaf pans by greasing with solid shortening and dusting with flour, then shaking off the excess. Line muffin pans with paper liners, or spray silicone muffin pans with non-stick spray. Set aside.

Mix flour and sugar, salt and baking powder together in a large bowl.  In a separate bowl whisk 3 eggs, the milk or buttermilk, and add the oil. Stir until combined.  Gently combine the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients, stirring only until the flour is absorbed. Mix in 2 cups of the blueberries, and put batter into pans. The batter will be quite stiff.

I used 1/3 cup of batter for each muffin, then topped with about 5 additional blueberries, pressed gently into the top of the batter.  For muffin loaves, fill 3/4 way up the loaf pan, smooth the batter, then top with additional blueberries, patting down gently. I left them like this, naturally beautiful. You could add large crystals of sugar, or perhaps a streusel topping, but we liked them with the big juicy berries.

In my oven, the muffins took 25 minutes to cook through, and the loaf pans varied.  The larger loaves were 60 minutes, with the 5 inch long mini-loaf pans averaging 45 minutes.  How many loaves and how many muffins you will make depends tremendously on the muffin pan and the loaf pan size. Sorry, I know that's vague, but once you've made this, jot down how many you get based on your pan size.  I had 2 large loaves, 1 small and 6 muffins.

I cannot keep these muffin loaves and blueberry muffins stocked on my farmstand for more than a couple of hours.  A large loaf sells for $3.99 and a miniloaf for $1.99, with six muffins going for $1.99 too.