Day 19 of 365

My newly planted strawberries are getting the spring rains they were hoping for. Today is just a cloudy, cool, drizzly kind of day. One of those days you don't want to go outside. One of those days when you just want to sit somewhere warm with a nice fuzzy blanket and a good book. Or one of those days when you want to do some baking.

Blueberry muffins have been one of our favorite morning treats for Christmas. Part of our Christmas tradition is that we always have muffins and juice for Christmas morning breakfast. We usually have three or four different types of muffins. Some years it's poppy seed or lemon or apple or bran or banana muffins, but blueberry muffins are always in the mix.  I used to buy them from the store's bakery but was always dissatisfied with their texture and flavor. Then I went to boxed mixes in order to try and find the best. One year we even went so far as to buy every flavor of every brand and did a "taste test" before Christmas so we could choose just the right muffin.

Skip ahead 20 years and I finally got it figured out. Homemade all the way! Make up batches a couple days before Christmas, freeze them, and warm them Christmas morning. A while back I found a perfect - absolutely perfect, to-die-for blueberry muffin recipe and now there's no looking back. I found it on allrecipes.com and it's called, "To Die For Blueberry Muffins". I follow the recipe exactly except I use frozen blueberries instead of fresh.

So on days like today when it's cool and raining and I feel like keeping warm, I turn to baking muffins and breads. Today blueberry muffins sounded like a good choice, so I mixed some up. I couldn't wait for them to cool all the way - I had to dig right in!