Hi friends! Even though I haven’t been in school for a long time, I still get that “yay, school’s out!” feeling at this time of year. I am excited for long days and warm weather (though it’s been pretty grey in California lately) and gardening and flowers and trips to the beach and bounty in the farmers’ markets. I have some good summery recommendations for you in this newsletter — books, activities, muffins, you know, all of the important things.
I was on Today with Hoda and Jenna on Memorial Day, recommending some summer books! I’ve recommended all of these to you before, but if you didn’t pick them up then, do it now: Mrs. Nash’s Ashes, For Her Consideration, and A Living Remedy. I also recently read both The Agathas, and the sequel The Night in Question, and they’re both super fun YA mysteries. And historical romance fans need to immediately dive in to An Island Princess Starts a Scandal!
Okay, this isn’t news to any of you who follow me on Instagram, but lately I’ve plunged down the garden obsessive rabbit hole, and I don’t see myself surfacing anytime soon. I’ve been to one of a few plant stores at least once a week for the past six weeks or so, I spend my spare time scrolling through pictures of rose bushes and tomato plants, I have a list on my phone of future plants that I want (so as to not keep impulse buying…does it work? sort of), I have a drawer now full of four different kinds of plant fertilizers (some of which smell…not great), and I spend a non zero amount of time talking to my plants. Is this an inexpensive hobby? Absolutely not (the money I have spent on dirt alone!). But I’ve gotten a whole lot of joy out of it, and it forces me to go outside multiple times a day—no, it makes me excited to go outside multiple times a day, which even when it’s grey outside, still makes me happy. It is currently rose season, but I am very excited for tomato season, hopefully coming next month to my tiny backyard. I also have a variety of houseplants that I’ve managed to keep alive for the past five or so months, which delights me because I’ve always been much worse at houseplants than outside plants, so we’ll see how this goes. Not everyone has outside space for gardening, of course, but if you have a tiny bit of it, see what you can do, and see what you can bring inside too. And as much as I love looking things up online and seeing advice and reviews, asking questions at my local plant stores has been incredibly helpful (many thanks to the wonderful staff at both East Bay Nursery and Paraiso Plant Studio). (Oh no, Paraiso is having a sale this weekend. Uh oh). Anyway, as you can see, I’ve become that lady who just wants to talk about gardening all the time, so if you also want to talk about gardening all the time, tell me about your garden in the comments!
Speaking of seasons, if it’s already blueberry season where you are, like it is here, or if you have some frozen blueberries in your freezer, you should make this blueberry muffin recipe tonight and then you can have freshly baked blueberries for breakfast tomorrow morning. I saw this recipe where I see most recipes these days, Instagram, and I bought some buttermilk to have on hand so I could make it. That usually results in buttermilk languishing in my fridge for weeks or months, but I’ve made these muffins two days in a row now, so I have a feeling the buttermilk will be gone pretty soon. A few notes about the recipe (from Buttermilk by Sam, a blog where I’ve found a bunch of great recipes):
It needs 2-12 hours in the fridge after mixing it but before baking, which for me is honestly perfect, because I often want freshly baked blueberry muffins for breakfast, but I never want to mix things together early in the morning. But I can definitely mix things together before bed, and then just scoop spoonfuls of batter into muffin tins in the morning!
The recipe says you can use yogurt thinned out with some water in place of the buttermilk, which I might try eventually.
It also calls for you to use a neutral oil like canola, but says you can use melted butter, the muffins will just be less moist. (Apologies to those of you who hate that word!) I used melted butter both times I made it, and they were great, so do whatever is more convenient for you.
These would be amazing with a streusel on top; I was too lazy both times I made them to make a streusel and just sprinkled brown sugar on top and they were excellent.
The recipe is for any berry, so if you have a whole bunch of strawberries or raspberries or whatever, go wild.
I love my kitchen scale very much and it means that this recipe is truly not just one bowl but I only dirty one dish while making it, because I don’t have to measure anything — I feel like measuring in weights gets a bad rap because it sounds more precise and fiddly, but to me it’s the greatest gift for the lazy cook to be able to just throw things into a bowl and tare it and then throw more into a bowl. Get yourself a kitchen scale if you don’t have one!
Lemon Blueberry Muffins
(Makes 8 big muffins or 10 smaller ones)
Zest of 2-3 lemons
165 g or 3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg plus one egg yolk
1 stick/ a half cup butter melted and cooled*, or 100g or 1/2 cup canola oil or another flavorless oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract**
1/2 teaspoon salt
250 g or 2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
160 g or 2/3 cup buttermilk
1 cup of blueberries (if you use other, larger berries, dice them up first)
Brown sugar or turbinado sugar to sprinkle on top
*I know, a stick of butter is 113 grams, but each time I just melted the whole thing and threw it in and it was perfect
**She also calls for 1/2 teaspoon of lemon extract, which if you have it would be excellent in these; I do not have it and so didn’t use it either time and it was still very good and lemony.
Put the lemon zest and the granulated sugar in a big bowl together, and rub it together with your fingers until the sugar looks a little yellow and it’s all incorporated (about a minute or so). Add the egg and egg yolk to the sugar and whisk until it’s a much paler yellow than when you first added the eggs, and fluffier (about 1-2 minutes). Then pour in the melted butter or oil and keep whisking for another minute or two until the oil is totally emulsified. Add the vanilla and salt and whisk again. Then add all of the dry ingredients, whisk a little bit, and then add the buttermilk and whisk until it’s mostly combined but you can still see a little flour (do this part slowly, you never want to overmix muffins). Then fold in the berries, cover your bowl, and pop it in the fridge for two hours or overnight.
When you’re ready to bake, preheat your oven to 400 F while you get the muffins ready. Line your muffin pan or pans with muffin liners, or just spray them with nonstick spray. Divide the batter between the cups*** and sprinkle a little sugar on top of each muffin.
Bake for 20 minutes, until you can gently press on the top of a muffin and they spring back to you. Let them cool in the pan for a few minutes, and then take them out and eat them all.
***She says to put muffins in every other muffin cup to make them bake evenly, and I tried that with these muffins and it worked very well. Do it that way if you want, which means you need either two batches or more than one muffin tin to bake all of these, or just do it the normal way and bake them all at the same time if you don’t feel like doing that.
Enjoy!
Have a great weekend everyone!
xo
Jasmine