do you know the muffin man?

The muffin man bit is my favorite part of Shrek. I can’t think of muffins without going through that part of the movie in my head, or, more likely, out loud with my wife wishing I’d shut up!

I wanted to make some muffins for breakfasts, and I found a healthy blueberry banana muffin recipe on Epicurious.com that I decided to try, with a couple of small changes.

The original recipe calls for all purpose flour and only 1 1/2 cups of blueberries. I decided to use about double that many blueberries, and I used King Arthur white whole wheat flour instead of all purpose. I also wanted the muffins to rise well, so I added about 1 tsp more baking powder.

The recipe is:

• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup oat bran
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup mashed ripe bananas (about 3)
• 1/2 cup unflavored soy milk
• 1 large egg
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
• 1 1/2 cups fresh blueberries frozen blueberries, unthawed (6 to 7 ounces)

I also used cane sugar for the sugar, and put a sprinkling of Turbinado sugar on top of each muffin to give it some texture.

The weirdest thing I did was to bake the muffins in a popover pan instead of a muffin pan, and I lined the pan with squares of parchment paper, pushed down and folded to fit the cups. Why did I do this? I saw some similar at a store, and I liked how they looked, that’s about it.

I set the oven at 400 degrees F to preheat, then put the dry ingredients in a bowl and used a fork to mix it all together. then I mashed the three bananas and added the wet ingredients minus the blueberries. I added the dry ingredients to the wet and whisked it all until kind of smooth. I added the blueberries, realizing about then that there are a lot of blueberries, but that’s not a bad thing.

I filled the cups of the popover pan almost all the way, with the parchment paper (sprayed lightly with oil) sticking up quite a bit past there.

The muffins went in for about 20 minutes, until a toothpick came out clean. With the popover shape, I pushed the toothpick in pretty far to make sure it was done all the way down.

The result was about 10 really nice muffins! They’re tasty, a nice sugary texture on top, and filled to bursting with fruit! With just a touch of cream cheese, this is a breakfast I like!