It is hard to know which recipe to put first, but since the name of our blog is Dad’s Blueberry Muffins, I (Elyn) believe that should be first. I had one just last week in Germantown, straight from the freezer. It was so hot out, the muffin tasted like ice cream. You should try it.
Dad’s Blueberry Muffin Recipe
I won’t lie. He found it in the New York Times. But he perfected it in all its glory. Below is a copy of the original cutting from the paper, which no doubt disintegrated long ago. We have been eating these muffins for Years. They are glorious.
Dry ingredients:
3 ½ cups all purpose flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
¼ cup sugar
Pinch of salt
Wet ingredients:
5 eggs, slightly beaten
½ cup milk
5 ounces unsalted butter, melted and cooled. (This is 10 Tablespoons, or 1 plus ¼ stick of butter)
4 or 5 cups blueberries
Additional sugar for the top
Heat the oven to 425 degrees.
Grease the muffin tins, or if you are using paper cups, grease the tops of the tins in case batter falls on them. This way it won’t stick. This was mentioned in the original recipe, but Dad never did that! The tins clean up in the end anyway.
Mix all the dry ingredients together. You can also mix all the wet ingredients together.
Stir in the eggs, milk, and melted butter, but be careful not to overmix it. Carefully fold in the berries.
Sprinkle the tops generously with sugar.
Reduce the heat to 400 degrees F, put on the middle shelf of the over, and bake about 25 minutes until the muffins are golden brown.
Saint Louis Pumpkin Pie
Dad and Ginny tried many kinds of pumpkin pies until they settled on this one. They found the recipe somewhere – in the NY Times? I never knew until this year, when I wrote to Sam Sifton, the incredible NY Times food editor, who checked with Sara Bonisteel, the amazing “food historian” who can find anything. What a gem this one is – hidden deep in the annals of the Times, from October 24, 1968. Here is what the original page looked like:
The original recipe from the New York Times, October 24,1968.
Prepare pie crust in a large pie pan. This is too much filling for one small pan, but making it in a cast iron skillet works, or a regular large sized pie pan works, and when you have no pie crust, you can just bake this in a greased casserole, no crust at all.
Beat in a bowl with a mixer:
2 cups pumpkin (canned is JUST AS GOOD as fresh pumpkin. We tried it.)
1 cup milk
1 cup light cream (or just use milk and add a bit of heavy cream)
½ cup dark brown sugar
½ cup white sugar
1 and ½ tsp. cinnamon
¼ tsp. salt
½ tsp nutmeg
1 Tbsp. flour
2 eggs
Pour into a pie shell, and if you have them, float ¾ cup pecans on the top. Cook at 450 F for 10 minutes, then lower heat to 325 F for 50 minutes.
To gild the lily, drizzle in warm honey and serve with barely sweetened whipped cream.