Sullivan’s Blueberry Muffins

From the counter at Sullivan’s Coffee — Millbrook Falls, Connecticut

Frank Kowalski has been Jake Sullivan’s first customer of the morning for fifteen years. Black coffee. One blueberry muffin. He is on his stool before the sign is flipped, he has never once asked what’s in the muffin, and he has never once considered that asking might be an option — because a question implies the possibility of a change, and Frank considers flavored coffee the opening move of a civilization coming apart.

Fifteen years. Same stool.

The muffins at Sullivan’s have made grown men sentimental, which sounds like a joke until you watch it happen to a sixty-eight-year-old retired lineman on a Tuesday. They’re not clever. There’s no streusel, no lemon zest, no crumble the size of a hubcap. They’re tall and plain and a little rough on top, they come out of a hundred-year-old shop with mismatched chairs, and they taste like something somebody’s grandmother made without writing anything down.

So this is that blueberry muffin recipe — the old-fashioned kind, buttermilk, big domed tops, more berries than seems advisable. It takes one bowl, one whisk, and about half an hour.

Team Fresh Start can keep the lavender. This one belongs to Frank.

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Ingredients

Makes 12 tall muffins.

• 2½ cups (315 g) all-purpose flour, plus 1 tablespoon for the berries
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ¾ teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (200 g) granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs, at room temperature
• 1 cup buttermilk, at room temperature
• ½ cup (113 g) butter, melted and cooled slightly
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 cups (about 300 g) blueberries — fresh, or frozen straight from the bag

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How to make them

1. Heat the oven to 425°F (220°C). High to start is the trick behind the tall tops, so don’t skip it. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners and grease the flat top of the pan too — these are going to spread over the edges, and you want them to come off cleanly.
2. Whisk the dry things together. Flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and sugar in a large bowl. Thirty seconds with a whisk does what sifting used to.
3. Whisk the wet things in a second bowl. Eggs, buttermilk, melted butter, vanilla. Room-temperature buttermilk matters — cold buttermilk will seize the melted butter into little flecks. Not fatal. Just annoying.
4. Toss the blueberries with the extra tablespoon of flour until they’re dusty. This is what keeps them from all sinking to the bottom. If you’re using frozen berries, don’t thaw them and don’t rinse them, or you’ll be making purple muffins.
5. Combine, badly. Pour the wet into the dry and fold with a spatula until you no longer see dry flour — about twelve strokes. The batter should be thick and lumpy and look slightly wrong. Overmixing is the single thing standing between you and a good muffin; a smooth batter bakes into a rubber dome.
6. Fold in the berries with three or four more strokes. Stop while there are still streaks.
7. Fill the cups all the way to the top. Not two-thirds. All the way, mounded a little. This is a bakery muffin and it needs the batter to climb.
8. Bake 6 minutes at 425°F, then — without opening the door — turn the oven down to 350°F (175°C) and bake another 15 to 18 minutes, until the tops are golden and a skewer comes out with a crumb or two but no wet batter.
9. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then move them to a rack. Eat one standing up in the kitchen. It’s the law.

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From behind Jake’s counter

A few things, offered without ceremony, because he doesn’t think a muffin requires instructions:

• Stop stirring sooner than you want to. Lumps are correct. A batter you’ve beaten smooth will give you something you could bounce off the floor of the shop, and the floor of the shop is a hundred years old and would win.
• The hot start is the whole architecture. That first blast of heat pushes the muffin up fast before the crumb sets; dropping the temperature after lets the middle finish without burning the top. Two temperatures, one bake, no fuss.
• Frozen berries are not a compromise. In February they’re better than the sad fresh ones. Straight from the freezer into the flour, straight into the batter, into the oven. Add two minutes to the bake and don’t think about it again.
• Day two, split and toasted in butter. Jake will not confirm that this is better than day one. It is.

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You’ll find Jake behind the counter at Sullivan’s Coffee — and Frank on his stool, holding the line for Team Tradition — in Got Coffee, the first Millbrook Falls romance. ☕🫐