Blueberry Muffin - my tweaked recipe :)

Now, of all the recipes I tried out, I had a hard time finding one that I liked for blueberries muffin. It's the berries season for goodness sake! This frustrates me non-stop, I'm (at times..hehe) a perfectionist! Do you know how frustrating it is each time you do something and you're just not satisfied with it? And everything was followed perfectly through!

I ended up baking blueberries pie and apple pies, both of which I'm not that satisfied with. The first apple pie was nice, but too juicy inside (imo). Second apple pie was too sour (cos I used granny smith apple along with other apples) and blueberries pie tho looks good, taste too sour. I'm digressing here but gimme a break. I'm just lamenting how hard it is to find a good recipe that satisfies my taste bud!

I was told, cooking is like chemistry. If you follow the instruction to the T, there is no way you can go wrong with your recipe. Trick is - sometimes the recipe calls for whip on high speed, and recently I researched KitchenAid blender. There are 10 speeds! So, between 8,9 and 10 - which one is considered high speed? Obviously I need to do more research!

So after putting through my truly 'blessed' hubby and myself through several testing (there are recipes with poppy seeds, sour cream and other stuff) I finally came down to this one.

I like my muffins sweet, not (like my hubby put it) ass gluing sweet, but sweet enough that I don't feel like I need to add sugar into my milk to add taste!

I think this recipe can still be tweaked further, but maybe not. I'm quite happy with how it turns out so I'm keeping it. If you do tweak it, let me know what you did and how it turns out!

close up on blueberries, yummm

don't they look real yummy? hehehe

Dry Ingredients
2 1/2 cups of self-raising flour
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup fine white sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar

Wet Ingredients
1 1/2 cups room temp milk
1 stick plus 2.5 tbsp of melted unsalted butter
2 eggs, room temp
2 cups of blueberries
1 tsp vanilla essence

• Pre-heat your oven to 400F.
• Aerate (read notes below) the flour, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, white and brown sugar in a bowl.
• In another bowl, pour the melted butter, room temp milk, vanilla essence and eggs together. Whisk briskly to blend well. 
• Pour wet ingredients into the dry ingredients bowl, toss in the blueberries and mix until mixture is lumpy but no obvious dry flour. Pour into your cupcake pans (at this point, I use cupcake papers so it's easier to remove them).
• Bake one side for 10mins then turn it around for another 10 mins. If you have one of those awesome oven that bakes evenly, skip this step.

Notes
Aerate can be done by two ways.

• Traditional - use a sifter. I'm pretty sure all of us know how to do this.
• Modern - use a whisk! Just run your whisk through the flour mixture to ensure it's well blended. Works the same way!

Olive Garden's Zuppa Toscana Soup

Now tell me who does not love a good soup?? Soup is my comfort food. The No 1 I go to when I'm sick. The hot soup going down your throat and warms up your chest (almost painfully scalding but oh-so-good at the same time) hitting your tummy, that is the best feeling I can get when I'm sick, especially with flu!

If you've been to Olive Garden, good bet is you tried this soup. Good bet is you loved it and the cheesesticks too!

I went to the website and they don't have this recipe up, so boo! But the one I have below is really close taste to theirs (hubby says it's even better and cost less than $10 to make for a HUGE pot... lol).

Now, I don't know how to make those cheese bread, so you'll have to find the recipe elsewhere.. :) . There are several changes you can make.

Sausage - you can find the sausage from anywhere. Generally, I like the one from Winco better than Walmart. Not gonna venture to other stores coz well, I'm more of a cost vs value person. I don't like spicy food much so I chose a mild instead of spicy.

Chicken Broth - I'm a true Chinese. By that I mean I'm very stingy. I love cooking another meal called porridge but that is another entry another time. Now, I saw how much those chicken broth by the packets or cans cost. Are you kidding me!? If you go to those spices aisle, you can find those cubes or powdered version. There will be an instruction on how to mix them and they make just as good a broth. Or, you can make the broth yourself, but the time and effort you have to spend is just not worth it.

Ingredients

1 lb. spicy Italian sausage
1/2 lb. smoked bacon - chopped 1/8th inch (about 4 slices is enough to be honest)
1 qt. water
(2) 14.5 oz. cans (about 3 2/3 cups) chicken broth
2 lg. russet potatoes - scrubbed clean, cubed
2 garlic cloves - peeled, crushed
1 med. onion - peeled, chopped
2 cups chopped kale OR Swiss chard
1 cup heavy whipping cream
salt and pepper - to taste

There are 2 parts to this. I'll put them as soup and meat. I prepared the soup base first as the potatoes need time to get tender. This usually takes around 15-20mins? I learnt in culinary books that 'simmer' means when there are bubbles that comes up to the surface slowly but not those violent bubbles when they boil rapidly. So, note that!

Soup Base

In a at least 3qt pot (for above ingredients, double your pot size if you're making more!), pour in water on high heat. Wait until it starts to simmer and put in the potatoes, wait until it boils for a while. When it starts to boil the starch in the potatoes will create these residue (I don't know what they are called), scoop them up and throw away. After the water is fairly clear, chuck in the garlic and onion. If you are using chicken broth mixture, pour in plain water and correct measurement of chicken broth powder. If you are using chicken broth then just pour that in now. 

Meat

Brown bacon in a pan over medium heat, making sure they don't get crispy burn. Once they are to your desired crispiness, drain the oil and set aside.

Prepare your sausages (peel off the skin). In a cold pan over high heat, put your sausage in, crumbling them as you go. This technique is called ... (Chef John explained this in his video for Sloppy Joe, go search it! lol), but anyway, it helps you to ensure the meat crumbles nicely. Once they are no longer pink, they are ready. Drain the oil and now we are onto the last part!

Ending

Pour the sausages and bacon into the soup base. Lower your heat until the soup just simmer softly for 10 minutes. If there is too much oil on the surface, scoop them up by putting a spoon on the edge of the pot with a slight pressure. You will notice the oil will go into the spoon and you can throw that away.

While waiting, we will clean a bunch of kale. Chop that first diagonally and then horizontally (so they are bite sized instead of awfully long). When 10 mins up add kale and cream into the pot, season with salt and pepper and serve! 

Tiny notes

• If you prefer your potatoes to be smaller, you can cut them in about 1/2inch thickness instead of cubes. That is how Olive Garden serve theirs. 
• Kale will turn slightly yellowish green after you throw them in. If you wish to maintain the presentation factor, throw in a bunch for the first few bowls (make sure you scoop them all up), preserve the rest of dinner or next day when you warm the soup in the pot.