Recipe #1: Joanna Gaines's Blueberry Muffins with Streusel Topping

     For our first recipe, I thought we would stick with a breakfast staple..Blueberry Muffins. One of the reasons, I decided to start with this recipe because my dad has a love of the fruit blueberry. He loves blueberry pie, blueberry muffins, blueberry cobbler, or blueberry anything. Is your dad the same way? I decided that muffins were an easy breakfast item that are really hard to mess up, so it would be a perfect way to start our foodie journey. I followed Joanna Gaines recipe to a tee. It was super easy and really a quick way to get breakfast rolling. I would recommend making these the night before if you are an on the go type of person but if you have plenty of time in the morning to make your family breakfast, then you can make these the day of.

     The first step was to make the streusel topping and it was super simple and easy, that anyone could do it. Ladies, that even means your husband, boyfriend, dad or brother, even with some guidance. It was a messy process but when is cooking not messy? Joanna recommended to either use a pastry blender or your fingertips and I found that using your fingertips moved the process along faster and the streusel topping formed to the consistency that I wanted. Once it is the consistency, that you want, store the topping mixture in the fridge. I put saran wrap on my topping just because I'm a little OCD about putting things in the fridge without a lid on them.

     Then, it was on the baking challenge or as I call it the recipe. Make sure your preheat your oven before you even start baking. You could use a box mixed but what is the fun in that? You pull out the best machine that has been made on this God given earth, the Kitchen-aid. Bet you can't guess what color mine is? (pics to come later) You mix all the wet and dry ingredients in your kitchen-aid until, it is a thick consistency like a batter. Put your batter in the muffin tin with liners and sprinkle the streusel topping on top and bake. I found that it only needed to bake for 24 minutes and it was perfect. The texture was more like cake, which I prefer my muffins to be.

     For this recipe, I didn't line my muffin tin and rookie mistake #1, line your muffin tin with liners. It makes it a lot easier when taking out the muffins after they are cooked and cooled. I ended up having to scrape some of my muffins out of the tin with a knife which caused them to only be a muffin top instead of a whole muffin, which result in a loss of deliciousness. :(

     Once my muffins were out of the oven, I would let them cool a bit even though Joanna's recipe says to serve warm. I just think once the muffins cooled, it was a lot easier to get them out of the muffin tin. Once they are to your liking, serve them. I served cold butter with my muffins and that made them extra delicious. You can serve with honey or maybe a blueberry jam if there aren't enough blueberries for you. Everyone enjoy these muffins at my house and they were most certainly gone by dinner time.

     These make a great breakfast, a good snack, or even a tasty dessert. However or whenever you bake these, this recipe will for sure be a hit at your house too.

Cheers,

Mikenzie