Blueberry Muffins

As you may have gathered from previous posts, I try to provide snack for Sophia’s preschool class once a month. In the Montessori world, snack is actually a “work”—students serve themselves that day’s snack on glass plates, pour themselves juice or water into little glasses, join their friends at a table to eat, then clean up their dishes. It’s adorable.

For whatever reason, and probably because of where we live and my own attitudes about food, I feel self-imposed pressure for snack to be creative, delicious and healthy. It’s a huge Earth Mama no-no to bring sweets... no cupcakes, chocolate, etc. In fact, when students have their birthday celebrations at school, those snacks are supposed to be healthy, too (read: not too sugary). 

Sophia is enamored with mini-muffins, so I finally broke down and bought two mini-muffin pans. The beauty of the mini-muffin, I’ve discovered, is that a single recipe for 12 regular muffins makes 48 minis, perfect for little hands. 

We girls have been experimenting with muffin recipes all year, and, for those of you who bake (I am a super-novice), you’ll relate to our dilemma. Every recipe to date is either too buttery and greasy, but moist, or not buttery enough and dry. Since we had such amazing luck with the Irish-American soda bread recipe from the King Arthur Flour recipe site, I thought I’d give their blueberry muffins a try.

The result: delicious but not too sweet muffins that are moist but not too buttery. Pretty perfect! The main reason they get a four-star rating is because mini-muffins are always a bit dry compared to regular-sized muffins, and because I forgot (as I always do) to sprinkle the tops with cinnamon sugar. Next time we’ll try a bit of turbinado and cinnamon on top, and I bet they’ll be perfect.

Kiddos are having this snack for Earth Day, and I look forward to a report on their reception. Honestly, though, what kid doesn’t like blueberry muffins? Sophia’s also sharing organic carrot sticks, because you have to have something “healthy” with every snack. Seriously, I’m not sure how I did it, but even if she’s having a cookie or a bit of dark chocolate for bedtime snack, she’ll insist on something healthy to accompany it. Not that I mind, but is anyone else’s kid like this? Love it!