Ah, a lovely batch of golden blueberry muffins.
Except, sometimes they're not golden. Sometimes, they're more like greenish-blue blueberry muffins instead.
Fresh blueberries are a pleasure to bake with. But unless you have access to a blueberry patch, fresh berries can be quite expensive; and their season is short. Enter frozen blueberries, the backbone of many a winter blueberry pie.
But pie is one thing. Muffins, scones, cake, and coffeecake are quite another, frozen berries bleeding juice into batter to turn these golden-hued beauties a sickly shade of purple-green.
This doesn't have to happen, you know. There's a simple solution.
Rinse your frozen blueberries before you use them.
Rinse berries in cold water several times – until the water is noticeably lighter when you drain them. It'll start out dark blue, but will gradually shade its way up to a watery red/blue.
When that happens, dry the berries well with several layers of paper towels, top and bottom.
Let's see what happens when we use them in muffins. Specifically, Famous Department Store Blueberry Muffins.
Gently and quickly stir the frozen berries into the batter. You'll see a few inevitable streaks of blue, but the entire batter shouldn't turn blue. If that starts to happen – stop stirring, you're done!
The muffins made with rinsed frozen berries are on the left; the un-rinsed frozen berries are on the right. See how much more the juice bled into the batter when we didn't rinse the berries beforehand?
And here are the baked muffins. The rinsed frozen berries tinted the muffins just a bit, but not nearly as much as they would have had I not rinsed them.
Man, now I REALLY want a blueberry muffin, don't you? This berry-packed recipe is for Famous Department Store Blueberry Muffins, a clone of the sugar-crusted muffins once served in the top-floor café at Jordan Marsh, a Boston department store (and New England institution). Jordan's, sadly, is out of business; but their muffins live on.
Remember, rinse and dry those frozen berries before you use them; it DOES make a difference. Enjoy!
Note: To those of you below wondering about losing flavor and nutrients when you rinse the berries, it's true, you probably lose a little bit of the berries' nutrition. But most of the juice (and vitamins) remain inside the berries; and I doubt you could notice a difference in flavor. By all means, use berries without rinsing, if that's your preference. As usual – no baking police here!
April 12, 2022 at 1:28am
In reply to I read something about… by Erin (not verified)
Same for me. No rinsing dust with flour no color change in batter.
December 2, 2023 at 8:06pm
In reply to I read something about… by Erin (not verified)
Me too!
January 23, 2022 at 8:52am
When using frozen berries I mix them in with the dry ingredients sugar ,flour etc- before adding wet...not adding more flour..great muffins..when using large frozen berries I cook the muffins 5 minutes more...
January 26, 2024 at 5:12pm
In reply to When using frozen berries I… by Pam (not verified)
This is what I do too.
January 4, 2022 at 2:17am
Thank you so much for this great tip about rinsing the blueberries before using them. I've been making dog treats for years using dried blueberries in the recipes, but lately want to work with fresh or frozen ones. Now I know what I have to do beforehand.
December 12, 2021 at 5:32pm
Hello Good Afternoon I barely bake with Blue Berries 🫐I do have some in the freezer that i want to use and since I’m baking Homemade 🍞 for an extra Christmas Gift 🎁 and I was looking for a recipe to use them without thawing and I found this one ☝️ thank you and I will try this recipe out
December 13, 2021 at 4:36pm
In reply to Hello Good Afternoon I… by Maria Pilar Morales (not verified)
Thanks for baking with us, Maria!
July 12, 2021 at 3:56pm
I haven't made these muffins (yet) but in the past when using frozen blueberries in muffins I just measure out my flour for the muffins and then take out a tiny bit for dusting the muffins before adding them. This way I'm not adding more flour to the mix than the recipe calls for. Works great every time.
July 13, 2021 at 2:18am
In reply to I haven't made these muffins… by Cathy (not verified)
That was "dusting the blueberries".
July 12, 2021 at 3:08pm
When I worked at the Shawmutt Inn in K-PORT , the baker shared his secret with me. He did not stir the berries in at all. Rather then stirring the berries in he would put a couple of berries in the bottom of each cup and add a dab of batter and repeat until the cup was full. As the the muffins baked the batter spread delicately.
Pagination