6/15/2006 10:22:00 PM|||Jodie Chase|||

When it comes to the farmers market, I have no self-control. None. Especially when it involves fresh, seasonal produce with a limited window of availability. Like the perfect porcinis I spotted today, right next to a box of morels. Only the lack of enough cash in my pocket caused me to put them back on the table. I’m sure I’ll cave next time.

Then there are the blueberries I just had to buy a few days ago. When the nice people at the stand offered a price break for three cartons instead of one, I buckled. I mean, think of all the antioxidants!

A few days later, “Big Eyes” here still had a refrigerator full of berries about to go bad. I needed to bake something, anything, so they would not die in vain. My first thought was to call Merriland Farms, that little outdoor café set on the most peaceful grounds in bucolic Wells, Maine, to see if they’d be willing to share the recipe for their divine blueberry bread. But that seemed like too much work.

Then I remembered the famous Jordan Marsh blueberry muffins I’d heard about as a child in New England. Calls to my mom and my Aunt Lois yielded the exact same response, from different parts of Massachusetts: “Oh, yes. Those muffins were great. They were huge!” I found several recipes on the Internet for the famed department store specialty, but they were all slightly different from each other and I didn’t really trust them.

It was time to consult my trusty “Baking Illustrated,” written by the editors of Cook’s Illustrated magazine. After reading that a lot of things can go wrong with blueberry muffins, I felt reassured knowing they’d already tested the heck out of the recipe. They didn’t let me down. The muffins came out great.

But now, I have some questions for you bakers out there:

Do you usually use paper liners or just grease the muffin pans?
Do you use fresh blueberries or frozen?
Do you use sour cream? Buttermilk? Milk?
Do the muffins freeze well?

Tell me soon. Before I have to use up all the pluots.

-- Jodie Chase

|||115043552075353364|||Bounty of Berries