Good morning! and blueberries

Good morning!

This coming weekend we have two different cookies on the menu.  Chocolate chip pecan and ginger spice.  I just finished updating the menu for the following weekend.  You can order allspice muffins and savory egg salad. 

Today I'm making another attempt at my latest iteration of a high-protein, gluten-free, dairy-free ice cream (for oldest daughter).  I had a good batch last time, but it still was not quite right.  Today I'm going to do the same batch but this time I will alter the freezing process.  We'll see how it goes.

Someone asked me about using blueberries in batters.  So here are a few thoughts from my experience.  First of all, whether to use wild blueberries or non-wild (which we can call cultivated) is always an important decision.  Most people like cultivated in blueberry muffins and pancakes or for snacking by hand. These tend to have much more moisture and they are larger of course.  But sometimes in baking, I've found it makes much more sense to use wild.  They are smaller and have significantly less moisture.  You can only really buy them frozen in the grocery stores, it seems.  So when I use them, I always let them thaw and warm up to room temperature.  Then they are ready to use.  And because of their size I don't have as much of a problem with berries sinking to the bottom of a baked good during baking.  With using any blueberries comes the risk of juice making your batter blue once you start mixing.  I have found that if I take thawed wild berries and warm them up a bit in the microwave for maybe 30 seconds, I can rinse off the expressed juice in a colander, then let them dry on paper towels (top and bottom) and then finally pop them into the batter.  If I do all that, then I don't have to worry about blue batter.  

Could you pop them into the batter frozen?  You could but you won't have a batter that is baked all the way through.  They are basically little ice pellets you are mixing in, and they will keep your batter very cold for quite a while in the oven.  They shouldn't even be cold from the fridge. Let them come up to room temperature before mixing them in.

Now I have a craving for blueberry muffins.  And I have a large bag of frozen wild blueberries in my freezer, so maybe that will be my next activity today.

Have a great day everyone.  Colder temps are on the way, it seems, so get out those winter coats.