Lighting the spark

and a recipe for big beautiful lemon blueberry muffins

“Well, it is July.”

So said the woman standing next to me at the farmers’ market, as I scanned the tables last week frantically looking for strawberries. And just like that, another chapter in the annals of my favourite summer produce quietly turned a page. Enter blueberries and zucchini, exit strawberries stage left.

I’ve been dragging myself through the sweltering days and even the regular stormy outbursts of rain don’t seem to lift the mood. Time is caught in a slow-as-molasses hourglass, but beneath the steady drip I feel an incessant urgency, a fear that the minutes and hours and days are outrunning me.

When the weight of summer hangs like a humid cloud over my head, a reminder of what lies within can be a tonic.

He is not worthy of the honey-comb/That shuns the hives because the bees have stings.
—William Shakespeare

I think there must be a certain kind of magic that resides in the hearts of beekeepers. Surrounded by tiny gentle creatures whose sole purpose is to serve their Queen, surely the beekeeper absorbs some of those patient, purposeful qualities of the hive.

John is such a beekeeper. No matter the season or the weather, John lives in an aura of golden joy. And with a bee’s instinctive sense of where to find the hidden drop of nectar, he also seems to intuit my frame of mind. On some Saturday mornings when my mood is light, we exchange cordial hellos as I buy a dozen eggs, a jar of honey or simply return my empty egg cartons. Other days, as if he can see the Charlie Brown cloud over my head, he becomes a bit of a philosopher king, waxing poetic about life and love and the amazing nature of, well, everything.

And so it was this past Saturday. As I handed John my egg cartons—no eggs this week, thank you—he suddenly looked at me and said, “There is no fear. Only love. When we choose love, fear disappears. That’s when we will change. That’s when the world will change. Remember, there’s a little spark of God in all of us.”

I don’t know if the thundercloud in my mind was furrowing my brow, but as usual, John cracked the sky open and the golden sun came pouring over me. Yes, summer is speeding along, the weather is running hot and cold, I see the hourglass emptying. But I can stop and breathe in the roses on my terrace, open an umbrella, turn the hourglass on its side. Where love is, fear doesn’t grow. And the little spark is always there, if I but seek it out.

Big beautiful blueberry lemon muffins

Cook’s Illustrated

makes one dozen

There are many ways to eat seasonal blueberries: in a cobbler, or a pie; whizzed into a smoothie; in pancakes or crepes; or simply eaten out of hand in big greedy mouthfuls. But perhaps the most popular—and delicious—might be the simple blueberry muffin.

Back in the day, Cook’s Illustrated magazine was the ne plus ultra of recipe development, painstakingly testing home cooking favourites to find exactly the right methodology to make that perfect Caesar salad, Irish soda bread, brined turkey.

This recipe for making big beautiful muffins works with all kinds of add-ins: banana & walnut; raspberry & almond; chocolate chips & cherries. But the best in my view is this delicious lemon-blueberry version. Rising high in the pan, they’re the perfect way to welcome blueberry season.

Note: The original recipe calls for plain low fat yogurt. When a recipe calls for plain yogurt, I always use a local sheep’s milk yogurt that’s 6% MF. Anything higher in MF might affect the batter.

Ingredients

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

10 tablespoons unsalted butter (142 g, 1 stick plus two tablespoons), room temperature

1 cup sugar

Grated zest from one large lemon

2 large eggs

1½ cups low fat yogurt (see headnote)

1½ cups blueberries, tossed in 2 teaspoons flour

Coarse sugar for sprinkling, optional

1. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 375 *F.

2. Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a medium bowl and set aside. With a stand mixer or a handheld mixer, cream butter, sugar and lemon zest together until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl.

3. Alternating ⅓ at a time, beat in the dry ingredients and yogurt until a smooth, thick batter just forms.

4. Spray a 12-cup muffin tin with ½-cup capacity. Divide batter evenly among the cups; a spring-action regular or mini ice cream scoop works well. The muffin cups will be full. Sprinkle each muffin with coarse sugar if desired.

5. Bake until muffins are golden brown, about 25-30 minutes. Set pan on a wire rack to cool slightly, remove muffins and continue to cool or serve.